A wave of anxiety overtook me last night, I'm sorry to say. I was (am!) nervous about what tomorrow would bring, my last first day of school. Will I sit for a few minutes in the completely wrong classroom? Will I get cold called and not know the answer? Or will I talk too much and get labeled a gunner? (Will I ever stop worrying about such trifling things?)
But there is the thrill of it, too. I learned so many interesting things in just the first hour of my day! Did you know, for example, that until just this past summer, the federal government had a monopoly on growing marijuana for research purposes? That's right, the DEA controls a federally owned and operated facility at Ole Miss that grows, processes, and sells cannabis. Weird, right?
When this semester is through, I know that I will miss study sessions at Boston Common Coffee Co (with it's splatter-paint artwork featuring images like a cartoon unicorn-wolf hybrid with its ribs showing and the outline of Rhode Island), and looking out from the fifth floor commons over he Park Street Church steeple and the State House's golden dome, and eating that amazing combination of pickle and rye grilled cheese from the Sargent caf. I will miss being part of an academic community, for all its warts and bruises.
But I know that I will not miss having to juggle work and school and clinic, I will not miss completing meandering writing assignments and 24-hour finals, I will not miss this weird tension I still feel sometimes between wanting to be thought a smartypants by my peers and wanting to just keep my head down and get my work done. I will not miss the panic of seeing someone walk into the classroom wearing a suit and wondering what interviews are happening that I am not participating in. I will not miss FAFSA.
Law school has been so different from undergrad, and I know I will miss it less, but change is a'coming, and that's always its own thing.
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