Popularity and law school

When I was in 2nd grade, I wrote something to the effect of one day I was going to be famous and people were going to wish they had never been mean to me. I echoed these sentiments in 6th grade after repeated torment at the hands of the "mean girls" and dumb boys (only then I also included I was going to be pretty in there in my furious diary scribblings). In the meantime, I learned how to cope with those mean girls, my self-esteem, new situations, and made friends with those who others may not have been friend with. Cut to now: while I understand I don't have to be famous to make others jealous, and while I'm okay completely with my looks, I'm in law school and going through that cycle again. No, we don't make fun of each other on the playground and I'm pretty sure no one has made me cry recently, but there exists a certain measure of popularity and cliques within the law school realm. It took me a while to learn to navigate the waters, and I'm sorry to say it took me far too long to realize that quality over quantity of friends wins out any day.

Allow me to explain. The first year of law school, you discover your cliques. By the second and third year, you're delegated to those particular boxes, never to rise above that distinction. Legally Blonde actually isn't too far off the mark when it comes to the social realm of law school. I spent my first few months hanging out with people who dropped me a month before final exams and didn't exclude me in their study groups. To that, I thought: "Fuck them; I'll make new friends." And....I'm still kind of waiting for that to happen. That's not to say I have no friends in law school--I have. We're probably best described as the "not-cool kid's table." My friends now are awesome: we occasionally study together; we grab sushi and bitch about our lives; we have partnered up for the law school competitions; and we occasionally drink ourselves silly. (They've also watched my dog when I've went out of town--TRUE FRIENDS RIGHT THERE!) But our friendship is different from that of the average law student: we don't study together at school, we rarely attend legal social functions, and we are from all different social backgrounds.

Law school friendships are slightly androgynous.Most people that hang out together are from the exact same social backgrounds. They drink themselves sick on a regular basis. They go on trips to exotic locations. They date amongst themselves. It's a bit too......incestual for my tastes. As I've heard it so cleverly phrased: I prefer not to shit at the trough from which I eat. That being said, it's hard to get as far as you would like to go without building some of that popularity. It's a longer process. It's arduous. Put simply: sometimes I want to sell out and pretend to be super-cool (as if that's ever going to happen) and try to cheat the system.

And then I think about statistics regarding lawyers and their future happiness....and let it all go.