Orientation Day One

Preparation--"In anticipation of a future event, helps to make something ready to be utilized.”

-Merriam-Webster Dictionary

I moved into my new apartment on Monday and today marks the first day of orientation.  I’m now officially a law school student!!  Yayy!  That’s probably one of the most exciting things that happened today; everything else was the run of the mill orientation sessions.

Check-In/Welcome

I arrived early this morning to check in where I received my student ID, locker combination, my official first semester schedule, and a bunch of other fun law related information.  Since I have my finalized schedule, I could finally buy textbooks!  I’m a huge textbook nerd so I had a lot of fun with that.  At my school, they have a program where you can match the price of textbooks from another vendor and give you the difference on a gift card.  One of my books is backordered but the professor provided us with pdf versions of the required readings for the first two weeks.

The dean of the law school and university president welcomed the 1L class to the law school community.  The dean talked about having courage to do things that aren’t always easy in our careers; such as taking on controversial cases or clients whose cases aren’t so cut and dry.  After that, the president talked to us about how important it is for us to find passion in what we are studying.  If we can’t find passion in what we are studying then it is just information.  But if we have passion about these subjects, then we can make changes in our world.

Advisor Meetings

After the official welcome to the law school, I met with my faculty advisor and the rest of my advising group.  In our group, we introduced ourselves and my advisor told us a little bit about herself.  At my school, our legal writing program encompasses all three years and she teaches one of the classes I could take in my 2L year for that requirement.  She then gave us some tips about how to succeed in our first year from what she had seen with past 1L classes.  She will be my advisor for my career at the law school and help with picking classes and basically all of what an advisor does in undergrad.

Lunch with Student Ambassadors

For lunch, the law school paired an upperclassman with each of the small groups.  They were there to answer all of our questions in a more candid way than any of our professors would.  The student ambassador I ate lunch with told us that she likes to treat law school like a full-time job.  To do this, she gets to the law school early, around 8 or 9 am, and stays there until 5 or 6 pm.  She also talked a lot about blocking out her time every week so she has specific time to do her readings and update her outlines.  This sounds like great advice so hopefully I’ll be able to do the same.

Afternoon Sessions

The last three sessions of the day had us split up into our class sections.  Our class is so big that this year they have three sections instead of their typical two.  But our afternoon sessions were focused on prepping for class, professional development, and our law school lives outside of class.  The first described how best to go about doing our required readings.  In order to establish context for readings, look up the readings in the table of contents and to even read the notes prior to reading the assigned pages.  The moderator is also giving us other presentations later in the semester about outlining and exam preparation.

The next session focused on our school’s professional development course, required every year.  I’ll go over more about it in a later post when I talk about my schedule.  It also touched a little bit on our school’s pro bono society which is sponsoring a day of service on Saturday.  The last session was a panel of current law students who have leadership positions in student associations.  They also talked about how they got involved and what sort of events their groups put on.

So tomorrow is the second day of orientation and is also the day we take our professional oath!  Wish me luck and good luck to all of you going through orientation!