I’ve known I wanted to go to law school since I was in the 4th grade. My teacher decided to throw a mock trial competition, and I was assigned to be one of the attorneys for my client who had his tap shoes stolen from his neighbor. I had an absolute blast winning the case for him, and from then on I knew I wanted to do with my life what I did for that one week in 4th grade. 

That was almost 12 years ago. The other day as I sat in my Civil Procedure class I thought to myself: “I cannot believe I’m here right now.” It had always seemed like law school was just an idea, until it became a goal––and now it’s just what I do every Monday-Friday from 9am-3pm.

I had been told––or, for the sake of transparency, read on some Reddit page––that your 1L year is something that can only be known through experience. No movie, Reddit post, or “day-in-the-life-of-a-law-student” TikTok would ever give me the kind of insider info I wanted before my first day of class. This, of course, was unsatisfactory for my anxiety-riddled self, who just wanted to know every single detail about what to expect during my first few days. 

Now that I have experienced it and do know, it is sufficient to say that I am a changed woman.

The first week of 1L felt like coming up from the subway in Times Square: all you see are big buildings and hordes of people, so you need to find a spot on the block to pull up your maps while there’s honking and hot dog smoke overwhelming you, and you don’t know which side of the street you came from so you’re trying to orient yourself while getting the maps on your phone to work. In other words, the first week of 1L was chaotic.

Coming from an undergraduate school where syllabus week was seen as an extension of summer or winter break, it was unfortunate to find that no such thing exists in law school. That one week of mental prepping to get back into the student mindset is now just a fond memory. Maybe some law professors take it easy the first couple of classes, but others will have you think, “oh crap, we’re actually learning today?” Then you’re sitting in class thinking you did the reading “right,” until your professor starts talking and you realize you might as well have not done the reading at all, because whatever main takeaway you pulled from it has no bearing on what is being lectured on. And as you are pulling up different OneNote or Google Docs tabs and scrambling to highlight a sentence in your casebook that you don’t understand, your professor will go ahead and assign another 50 pages of reading due tomorrow. Mamma mia.

Someone told me that the hardest part about 1L is not that you’re learning law, but that you’re learning law while learning how to be a law student. In a school filled with extremely bright, high-achieving perfectionists, this can be hard to cope with. Not to call myself an extremely bright and high-achieving perfectionist, but heading into week four, I am still trying to nail down my own routine, even though I have no idea of what that routine should look like. For me, a solid step one would be to get a Boston city parking permit, but that’s an article for another time. If any of you have been dealing with the Boston street parking situation, my heart goes out to you.

So my fellow 1Ls, if any of you have felt alone in feeling like you have been in a prolonged state of “what is happening right now,”  I am here to assure you that you are not. I am right there with you. I’d like to think that we are the silent majority, but it’s also possible I’ve been talking to the wrong people. There’s also the possibility that some of us are faking it until we make it, and choosing to suffer in our confusion alone. What I have learned in my first few weeks in school so far is that we are experiencing a real cultural and mental shift, and it is absolutely okay if we do not have it all together right now. According to my TAs, we aren’t supposed to have everything together until late October (to which I wonder, how does that work?), and late October is still just a suggestion, not the rule. 

We were reminded of this many times throughout orientation, but it’s important to remember: we were accepted to BC Law for a reason. Whoever reviewed our applications wholeheartedly believed we could succeed here (and to whoever that admissions officer was, thank you). So guys, don’t worry! We’ve got this. 

But if you’re feeling like you don’t have it yet, it’s okay. Me neither.

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Alexandra Staller is a 1L student and brand new Impact blogger. Contact her at stallera@bc.edu.