My first semester of my 1L year (aka when I was in my first year of law school, for those who are of the non-legal begal variety) was nothing short of boring and terrifying with intermitten spurts of fun all wrapped in one sweaty, humid tropical cloud. Reading for class for the first few months was like reading Spanish; I speak Spanish like a kindergartener, if you're picking up what I'm putting down. In all fairness, I did manage to get around Spain and Italy on my ordering and directive Spanish skills. Can I speak 100% of this romantic, beautiful language? Hell no! And so it was with the law. I had to look up every other word, substitute its meaning and then read, re-read, re-read, and read aloud until something made sense. It was terrifying because of this stupid thing called the "Socratic Method" where law professors call on students at random and ask questions to get to the point of the day's lecture. Socrates must have been pretty bored with talking and just decided to force his students to talk to prevent himself from developing laryngitis. Did I mention that you didn't know if you were getting called on EVER? See? Terrifying.
This is where the boring part comes in. Do you know how boring and frustrating it is to read something you can't understand? You know, like IKEA furniture directions? What's far more boring is that reading law is not a social event. You can't have casebook clubs and all read aloud and drink coffee and eat pastries. In this rodeo, you're the lone cowboy. I thought this until I learned better. Moreover, it takes FOREVER to read something until you DO understand it. For instance, I had 2-3 classes per day. I don't remember my exact schedule, but let's say I had Civ Pro at 9am then Contracts at 11, then Torts at 3. In order to be prepared, one is expected to have read all the material assigned for the day, which is around 30 pages. FOR EACH CLASS. After a few weeks, I learned that I could average 10 pages an hour while reading. So, 10 pages per hour, 30 pages per class, that's 3 hours per class. I'm no mathematician, but that's a long fucking time to read for all three classes. They want us to read 9 hours a day AND show up to class AND sleep? Where was this in the brochure?
I think you get the picture of how miserable my life was for a few months until I figured out that a) I wasn't going to read all the material every day, and b) I needed friends so that I wouldn't continually have the urge to stab myself in the eye with a fork. I moved to Miami not knowing a soul except for my roommate, whom I only met while looking at his house for all of 2 hours. This was rough for Miss Social Butterfly McLawyer pants.
While I was in Miami, I eventually met a great group of friends and some of them have grown to become people I keep in touch with almost daily. Okay, I only contact one of them daily, but who's counting? We'll call him Irish Whimsy. I finally realized that studying at school in the breezeway in the center of the law school provided far more entertainment and opporunity for conversation than my lovely lavender bedroom wall. One night, we were far past being noobs but still struggling with our current legal writing assignment. We were partnered in our legal writing classes and turned in one document for one grade. The deadline was looming, and my partner (we'll call her SuperStar because, um, she was?!) and I began staying after school far past dusk until we were welted from all the fucking mosquito bites just so that we could perfect our Motion for Summary Judgment, as did the rest of the 1L class. (For all you aspiring Grammar Whores such as myself, "judgment" only contains one "e".)
One such night, Irish Whimsy and I are packing up, and walking to our cars in the same area of the parking lot. I should mention a few tid bits about Irish Whimsy. One, he's Irish. Two, he's really, really tall. Like 6'2 or something. To me that's like Shaquille O'Neill tall, and I've stood next to the hoop star in person. Should I mention that I'm 4'11"? Probably. So we're walking to our cars, 50-pound backpacks and laptops in tow when Irish Whimsy looks down at me and the following occurs:
IW: "I think I'm gonna call you Midget Mallet from now on."
Me: "Um, what? What the fuck is a midget mallet and why are you going to refer to me as one?"
IW: "Because you look like you got hit with one!"
Me: (With a seriously quizzical yet amused look on my face) Seriously what is a midget mallet?
IW: (Aglow with whimsy) You know?! A mallet that you hit people with on the head to make them midgets?! You're so short it looks like you got hit with one!!!!
He wasn't kidding either; he not only called me that but it caught on throughout our group. Now it's lovingly evolved to just Midge :)
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