October in Hartford

Strange as it may sound, I've been a law student for over six weeks now. The classes and the format of the curriculum has been everything I've come to expect, thanks in part to the wonderful author of Planet Law School. Hartford has it's charm, but the true benefit of this capital city is the fact that it is not Boston or NYC. Devoid of major nightlife, Hartford is a good place if you want to study and not be distracted from all these factors that make a city, well, a city.

As far as I can tell, the student body lacks the social requisite to rival that of undergrad. The general consensus, it seems, is that students are either too focused on their work to provide a cohesive environment for social events, or they simply lack the capacity to interact without the guiding hand of the undergraduate dormitory environment (or keggers on the weekends in which to co-mingle). Nevertheless, there is a deep division between the sections, utterly leaving half the class completely unaware of the happenings of the other half, merely because the two sections (and the night section) don't come together at any point in time.

Further, the commuter nature of the law school seems to be conducive to the anti-social aura that seems to characterize the law school. I guess that is what happens when a law school stands on its own, far from its parent institution, and which doesn't have the facilities to hold a dorm, thus unable to form a cohesive community.

In place of a live, face to face interactive community, we are left with a community that is predicated on an outdated email system (which I've managed to forward all the mail to my gmail account), not to mention artificially constructed community forums in the shape of facebook. The progression of a physically interactive community to one that is online contributes, most probably, to the seclusive nature of the law school and its student body.

Granted, it could very well be that I am among the masses of anti-socialites. For the first time in my academic career, I have chosen to remain intently focused on my studies alone - barring all other distractions. How this choice will ultimately impact my academic performance remains to be seen. This much I know is true: law school is not a laughing matter. People come to law school (at least the serious ones) because they know what they want in life; everything else gets set on the backburner. Given the innate characteristics of those masochistic people that apply to law school, it should be a well known fact that the law school environment should embody a sense of subverted competition, which I hope will push the envelope in terms of mental development towards the law.

So far, I'm thriving in this environment. The independent nature of legal studies has been conducive to my own independent tendencies. We'll just have to wait and see if this lifestyle will ultimately translate into positive results in the end.