In the upcoming months, I will be chronicling my experience as a part-time online law student in an ABA-approved school.
7/1/2024 —T-minus Four Weeks
One L is notorious. It’s hell. It’s sleepless. It’s (apparently) the hardest you’ll ever work in your life. School starts in four weeks. In the past few days, I have oscillated somewhere between panic and an intrinsic knowledge that it can’t possibly be that bad.
I approached this limbo by preparing meticulously. I read an article that said to get accommodations approved in advance, so I contacted the disability office and got my accommodations approved in advance. I read a book that said to get multiple colored highlighters, so I bought a pack of highlighters. I read another book that said you should enjoy life before the first day, so I took my girlfriend on a date. I signed up for the non-credit Introduction to Legal Writing course.
This prep class means that school actually starts in two weeks instead of four. Since I am taking only online classes for the fall semester, I wanted to have an in-person prep class. I wanted to meet people, to see the school, to ensure I was really ready.
I slept. I cried. I’m ready. I think.
7/4/2024 T-Minus Two Weeks
School hasn’t started yet, and yet I’m inundated. Getting ready for law school seems to be a job in itself. I go to the doctor because I won't have time when school starts. I see a friend, I tell her goodbye as if I am undergoing a serious medical procedure. It is strange, this business of preparing for another life. I’m so busy, I tell my girlfriend I don’t think I can be in charge of cooking anymore. There just isn’t enough time in a day.
We got our first homework assignment for the prep class. It involves no law whatsoever, and I can’t help but feel a little disappointed. I want to start. I want it. We are to read Scott Turrow’s One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School. I bought it “used” because I knew money would be tight even with my tuition covered by a generous scholarship. In order to keep said scholarship, I have to keep my GPA above a C and I am determined to do so. I immediately become one of those nerdy kids from the movies with too big glasses. The ones in the front row of the classroom with their binders color-coded and homework done weeks in advance. I crack open my first assignment and think, “So it begins.”
7/15/24 – The First Day (sort of)
I arrived a soft 40 minutes early to the prep class. Last week I visited the campus and found the location of the classroom so I wouldn’t get lost. I still live in LA though, and wanted to make sure that nothing caused me to be late on my first day.
When I walked into the classroom I was surprised to see that five students were already present. The other early birds slowly trickled in, and every seat was filled with ten minutes to spare.
I immediately learned I didn't know how to access the wifi and that I was not as old as I thought I was going to be in comparison to everyone else. While everyone was mostly wearing jeans, there was still an air of professionality. No one had on a shirt with a logo. One man was wearing a button-up shirt, but his shoes (Converse) dressed it down. A few had computers, a few had old-fashioned notepads. A few were talking. Most were silent and wide-eyed. Waiting.
At the bookstore that morning I had asked the cashier if I could use my scholarship to buy a textbook, and the clerk responded, “Well, What did your email say? Lawyers have to read everything," he chastised. “You clearly haven't been reading the emails.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, taken aback and slightly confused because I am a bit of a compulsive email checker and received no such correspondence with a date of scholarship activation.
“The scholarship money is released on the seventeenth,” he replied, and I mumbled thanks and got out of there.
All the chatter stoped, and the professor walked into the room. She was tall, even taller with her heels. She was thin, and in a deep voice announced, "There's no secret door to Narnia. There's no one secret to success in law school-- it's just hard work.”
Cori Bratby-Rudd is a queer LA-based writer and co-founder of Influx Collectiv(e)’s Queer Poetry Reading Series. She graduated Cum Laude from UCLA’s Gender Studies department, and received her MFA in Creative Writing from California Institute of the Arts. Cori is a first year law student at Southwestern Law.
