Fight The Hypo

This post goes out to my evening classmates who are no longer working during the day (you know who you are). It’s something many of us feel. It’s as much based on concerns for our own academic success as it is jealousy-inspired. It comes from the bottom of my heart…

Jerks.

Can we help you fill out your applications for the full-time division? No, seriously. While you sleep in and spend the day reading casebook and hornbooks and extra resources and briefing cases and outlining, the rest of us deal with meetings and conference calls and hellish commutes.

My modest proposal is a law punishing a part-time student who quits his or her job. The rule would be that if any evening division student quits his job, he should be required to brief every single case for their classmates, edit classmates’ outlines, research scholarship opportunities for classmates with full-time jobs, sit in on law review info sessions, attend ethics seminars, and, most importantly. have drinks and snacks ready for the classmates who brave (barely tolerate) rush hour traffic (damn beltway) each night to get to class.

Am I jealous? Sure. It’s great that my classmates in this position have the freedom to do this, but I can’t. So… I’m jealous.

Do I feel at a distinct academic disadvantage to those that do? Absolutely.

They essentially have 50 more hours per week to dedicate to something other than work. Forget just the time to read cases. What about the time and, more importantly, energy doing all the other personal life stuff the rest of us simply can’t do? I have these shelves that have been waiting to be hung for two months. It’s literally a 15 minute project, yet I just haven’t been able to get to it. Having these things hang out there is a serious stressor to the typical person who attends law school (i.e. Type A, overachiever, conscientious).

So, to those who have quit their jobs and continue to pursue part-time legal education… Bravo.

Now get me a Diet Coke and bag of pretzels for class tonight. Oh by the way, I might be late to class…. because there’s a police car with sirens on the OPPOSITE SIDE of the beltway causing everyone to drive 10 m.p.h. and making my commute to class 90 minutes instead of the usual 60… so make sure you keep it on ice and take good notes.