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Where The @#$% Is Room 13?

Today I make the run from Boise to Berkeley (oh, Jordan Valley, Oregon, you old friend you) exactly 365 days after I made this trip last year. I have to say, this August 15th seems a lot less stressful -- the idea of becoming a 2l is much less scary than the idea of becoming a 1l.

The truth is that neither are scary, but that's a bit of insight I certainly didn't have a year ago. In that vein, I recount for the class of 2011 all the ways I shot myself in the foot during the first week of law school. None of you are dumb enough to make all the mistakes I made last year, and yet, everything still worked out for me. Hopefully any of y'all who may be stressing can find some comfort in that. If not, maybe you can find comfort in laughing at me.

I kicked of my blunder-streak first thing Monday morning, when I chose to rely on Tele-bears for my class times. (FYI, Tele-bears online times are often off by 15-20 minutes.) I compounded that error by misreading my schedule, and walking into room 100 at 8:50 a.m., where I thought I would find my LRW section. Everyone else in my section went to room 13 at 9:15.

I realized the moment I opened the door to room 100 that somehow (WTF?) class had already started. But it was only after I slipped to to the back of the room and found a seat that I figured out that this class, whatever it was, could not be LRW. In fact, I was sitting in Income Tax, among a group of bored looking 2/3l's. "Crap." I thought. "But no real problem. I'll just lay low, sit through this class, and when it ends I'll roll on over to LRW."

Nope. A look at the Boalt website revealed that the tax class ended well after my LRW class was supposed to begin. So, just as awkwardly as I entered, I packed up my stuff, triple-checked my schedule, and slunk toward room 13.

Cue blunder-streak phase two: for the next forty minutes or so, room 13 was utterly un-findable. I mean, I absolutely could not find that place anywhere. I did a grid. I hurried up and down the first floor several times. Then I combed the second floor, to be sure. I cast my search net wider; maybe room 13 was in Simon? Maybe it was in "Old Boalt"? With a number like "13" it HAD to be on the first floor -- but where the @#$% was it??? Was I crazy? It was 13, right? Maybe I was the victim of some sort of typo for 133, or 113?

Eventually I did the first smart thing of the day and asked someone at the Registrar's office for directions. Five minutes later I walked into room 13 (turns out it was in the basement, of all places), just as my LRW class was ending.

My Monday blunders continued. Later that day I sat down in the library and proceeded to read the wrong assignment for Criminal Law. Weirdly, the same thing happened the next day. And the next. Sometime around the end of the week I figured out that I had purchased the wrong damn casebook, but only after I had filled it with hi-lighting and margin notes, just the way I thought a grown up for reals law student might.

After that things evened out. I started arriving to the right rooms. I started reading the right books. And by the end of the semester I must have become a pro -- I know that because that's when I began to stop coming to the classrooms, or reading the books.

The point I am trying to get across is not that I'm an idiot (though frankly, that conclusion does seem pretty inescapable). The take-home point is that, despite myself, I made it. I'm sure you will too.

Welcome to Boalt!

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on August 15, 2008 (boomark / email).