a momentary lapse of zen (aka Panicking!)

[Jolie Was Here]

Smiley, I'm just counting the minutes until you get here and we can freak together.  (And I know I owe you an email...so sorry, I've just been out of my regular internet loop.)  I rolled into A2 yesterday and have been battling my own anxious demons ever since...particularly since my leap-of-faith house currently looks like my worst dirty student ghetto nightmare.  Sweet Jesus, do those boys need a house mother!  Anyway, I don't have much time online right now, but it's so heartening to read everyone's words of wisdom.  As always. 

Good luck, everyone, with your respective moves and orientations and etc!  Thinking of y'all!

[mobo]

jolie, that reminds me of my first few hours in my new place...

a native spanish speaker friend was helping me move in and do some very preliminary cleaning in my apt. i was scrubbing out the refri while she was working on the stovetop...and every few minutes i would hear this very heartfelt and quiet...

"AY! Que muchachito!!!"

which means

"UGH! What a BOY lived here!!!"

the good news: he really didn't cook, so there wasn't baked on greasy yuck to scrape off.

the bad news: he didn't clean, not once in the year plus he lived here, so there was plenty of negligent grime to deal with.

anyway, it made me laugh. just saying it out loud, with feeling, makes me feel better. go on.  you know you want to try it.

[greengrl]

well, if you would have picked Iowa you would already know what orientation was like today was especially long and annoying. but it gets better

i almost did pick iowa actually...would have been fun to be classmates with you - now it will be fun to compare experiences...

i suppose at one point we should move over to the students board...but they just seem short tempered - maybe just short on time - over there.

You'll have a great time at Northwestern, though. Trust me, less than two weeks in Iowa City and I'm DYING for Chicago, esp in the food department. Something about the sushi restaurant right next door to the pet store makes me leery I cant' wait to swap war stories...

I'll tell you this much--this school is VERY much like high school. There is already a popular clic of girls who refuse to talk to anyone but each other and/or an attractive male. One of them rolled her eyes at me today--yeah, it was pretty bad. What's worse is that I almost wasted a second caring There are a lot of REALLY young students--more than I expected.

But I dont' WANNA go to the student's board. I prefer denial

[mobo]

well, if you would have picked Iowa you would already know what orientation was like today was especially long and annoying. but it gets better

i almost did pick iowa actually...would have been fun to be classmates with you - now it will be fun to compare experiences...

i suppose at one point we should move over to the students board...but they just seem short tempered - maybe just short on time - over there.

You'll have a great time at Northwestern, though. Trust me, less than two weeks in Iowa City and I'm DYING for Chicago, esp in the food department. Something about the sushi restaurant right next door to the pet store makes me leery I cant' wait to swap war stories...

I'll tell you this much--this school is VERY much like high school. There is already a popular clic of girls who refuse to talk to anyone but each other and/or an attractive male. One of them rolled her eyes at me today--yeah, it was pretty bad. What's worse is that I almost wasted a second caring There are a lot of REALLY young students--more than I expected.

But I dont' WANNA go to the student's board. I prefer denial

you think that i am going to be able to afford to eat out at NU prices?? or have the time to enjoy chicago properly??? i have to say though that i have yet to find a bad place to eat, from the local blue collar greasy spoons to the sushi place down the street (my budget starts when school starts), it's been great all the way around, which is such a welcome change from el salvador. you can't imagine.

high school? rolled her eyes? god help me if the nu students are as bad. (and god help you if that *&^% doesn't stop fast.) see, i have a bad habit of calling people on their behavior, and i can see myself, already, leaning back, and saying in a very nice tone, "excuse me, did you just roll your eyes at me?"

i never understood how those girls found each other. i mean, i have a hard enough time with the secret gay handshake (i never get it right and confuse everyone, it's embarrassing)...how do they DO that so quickly?

i refuse to stress about this. (let's see how well that works.)

[greengrl]

well, if you would have picked Iowa you would already know what orientation was like today was especially long and annoying. but it gets better

i almost did pick iowa actually...would have been fun to be classmates with you - now it will be fun to compare experiences...

i suppose at one point we should move over to the students board...but they just seem short tempered - maybe just short on time - over there.

You'll have a great time at Northwestern, though. Trust me, less than two weeks in Iowa City and I'm DYING for Chicago, esp in the food department. Something about the sushi restaurant right next door to the pet store makes me leery I cant' wait to swap war stories...

I'll tell you this much--this school is VERY much like high school. There is already a popular clic of girls who refuse to talk to anyone but each other and/or an attractive male. One of them rolled her eyes at me today--yeah, it was pretty bad. What's worse is that I almost wasted a second caring There are a lot of REALLY young students--more than I expected.

But I dont' WANNA go to the student's board. I prefer denial

you think that i am going to be able to afford to eat out at NU prices?? or have the time to enjoy chicago properly??? i have to say though that i have yet to find a bad place to eat, from the local blue collar greasy spoons to the sushi place down the street (my budget starts when school starts), it's been great all the way around, which is such a welcome change from el salvador. you can't imagine.

high school? rolled her eyes? god help me if the nu students are as bad. (and god help you if that *&^% doesn't stop fast.) see, i have a bad habit of calling people on their behavior, and i can see myself, already, leaning back, and saying in a very nice tone, "excuse me, did you just roll your eyes at me?"

i never understood how those girls found each other. i mean, i have a hard enough time with the secret gay handshake (i never get it right and confuse everyone, it's embarrassing)...how do they DO that so quickly?

i refuse to stress about this. (let's see how well that works.)

Tell me about it. Seriously, I think all their designer knock off purses have magnetic chips in them that draw them together and unite them in the spirit of intolerance and false pretenses. BARF. NU won't be that bad--they do a good job about recruiting people who have actually outgrown their pull ups. Iowa, not so much. I am VERY blunt as well--I have a very bad habit of calling people out and saying it just like it is. We were having a group talk yesterday and they were going on about how we shoudl be sensitive to people's emotions when talking in class. I, of course, have to open my mouth to say "well, we're training to be unbiased professionals so I think if we can't put our personal feelings aside we need to consider what kind of legal counsel we can provide for our clients". You would have thought I said I eat babies for breakfast. Oops. Note to self: refrain from being self at all times--people just don't get me.

At least things here are cheap. I would be really sad living in Chicago on a budget but I did it for years--you can find some good cheap eats and the city is really doing a lot of fun stuff with BYOB places. A cheap bottle of wine and some finger food can be fun in the right city.

Back to reading. Eighty pages just for tomorrow. Boo for orientation week classes

GG

[mobo]

LOL

hang in there - i tell myself that people will eventually get me, they may not like me once they do, but at least they will get me.

and don't stop saying what you really think out loud. for all you know, there are a lot of other people thinking the same thing who are too shickenchit to say so themselves.


"eat babies for breakfast" priceless....

LOL

[smiley]

Thanks Pattydream and Jolie for the nice words. I think there's just so much stress leading up to the actual starting of law school. When I consider this process that we've all been through, beginning a year or even more ago, I'm amazed and proud to have come this far! I think I'll feel better once I actually get to Ann Arbor. I'll have fun exploring, taking walks to clear my head, hanging with Jolie and Vapid...Jolie, sorry about your apartment! And don't worry about sending me an email, I barely have time to do anything anymore, so busy! I'll see you soon!

Greengrl, I cannot believe those cliquey girls at Iowa! The thing about "sometimes people don't get me" - I think about that a lot too. From the standpoint of being older, having different experiences in college and then work, having different interests, and I think part of being a non-trad student and taking different paths to get to law school is also not putting up with a lot of bullsh*t.

Anyway, thanks for the warm words everyone and it's interesting to hear how everybody is doing and how we're handling things. I'm hanging in there. 

[Astro]

Anyone else in the grip of a "what the #*$& am I doing?" episode?     Speak up!

Yes!  Last week.  I called my husband on the way to work, almost in tears. 

Bah, second-guessing gets us nowhere.  I choose to look at it as a healthy aknowledgment of the magnitude of the decision, as opposed to insight about the rightness or wrongness of the decision.  Does that make sense?

(Jolie, based on your posts I personally really, really feel like this is a great decision for you.  Michigan is lucky to get you.  As the kids say, just sayin'.)

Yes, yes, yes, and yes, especially on the last bit -- the note to Jolie. Yay, Michigan!
The same goes for UT and you, Archival!

I face extreme gaps in confidence almost daily -- about money, my academic ability, my career prospects, the potential that I'll make friends, how to get into that clinic...  I made my final decision on a school today and immediately thought of everything I was missing at the other. 

I think this really is just an acknowledgement, like archival says, that we've been through enough in life to know how important these things are.  In any case, I'm choosing to believe that this experience is also giving us the wisdom to make the right decisions.

BUMP to cling onto as a security blanket.