Holy moly

Alright, I admit it was a bad idea to try and keep a blog going while in law school. But now that law school is done, maybe I can be better about it.

So, I officially graduated! Honestly, I felt like graduation was pretty anticlimactic. By the time the ceremony happened, I was completely over school itself and just wanted to sleep before starting bar prep. I think it had a lot to do with how nuts my life was at the time, and being upset that my dad couldn’t be there (or even really appreciate what was going on).

I won’t lie, the last semester of school was TOUGH. It wasn’t the classes really, but there was just so much going on. For a typical 3L, you’re doing a ton of things your last year. You’re trying to make sure you’ve got all your graduation requirements taken care of. The requirements at St. Thomas go beyond just specific classes; there’s a upper level research/writing paper component (7500 word requirement), mentor work that require 30 hours of experiences and meetings a year, we have to complete at least 50 of community service work, among other things. On top of that you are most likely working, you’re trying to find a job for after graduation, and you’ve got to get your bar application in.

Speaking of bar applications, they suck more than I ever imagined. I had been keeping records of stuff I knew I’d need to supply (name change, papers relating to a lawsuit I was involved in), but it still took me hours (really, days) to get everything I needed put together and filled out. And you need references galore; people who can attest to your character, people who have known you for a million years, people who aren’t professors or classmates. There was a lot of little intricate things. You have to make sure your bar application matches your law school application, and if you have ever gotten a ticket or been arrested or anything, you have to find all the paperwork surrounding that.

It doesn’t sound crazy, but it really is. I have a friend who got an underage consumption ticket when she was a freshman in college. She took the typical four years to graduate undergrad, worked for a year (maybe two?), and then went into law school. So by the time she’s filling out her bar application, it’s been 7-8 years since she got the ticket. The bar application required a copy of the police report and a copy of the ticket itself. Her college was in a smallish town, and in order to get a copy of the report, which is something you don’t typically get when you get a ticket, she had to physically drive to the police station and request it. Luckily it was only about an hour and half away, but still- that’s at least 3 and a half hours just to get the report! Not counting the time it takes to figure out how to get your hands on the report in the first place. It’s crazy.

We haven’t even discussed classes yet. This will probably be a separate post at some point, but the 3L struggle is a real thing. You’ve been working in the field doing actual lawyer things for about 2 years, and your classes are like “fill out this fake petition” or giving you some hypo that would never exist in the real world. Or your lectures are droning on about things that aren’t actually related to the class and you spend 2 hours thinking about all the other things you have to get done. A lot of my 2L classes had 3Ls in them, and I remember thinking “how can they just not show up so much and not ever be prepared?” Let me tell you, I totally get it now, and I’m so sorry I judged people for it.

On top of all the regular things, my dad spent nearly all of my last semester in the hospital. His dementia has progressed rapidly, and his communication skills have basically disappeared. I’m his only child, my parents have been divorced for over 15 years, and let me tell you how many people start bailing out when someone gets difficult to deal with. Basically his only family consists of me, and his sister and her husband. I won’t get into most of it publicly, but I have to say that if it wasn’t for the support the staff at the Minneapolis VA Hospital gave not only my dad, but me as well, I wouldn’t have made it through this last semester.

My original intent when I started writing today was to talk about Bar Prep, but this has gotten pretty long already. Tune in for another update soon (seriously, like within the next few days, I promise) that starts to cover that.

Until next time,

Emilie the Fierce