It takes a lot of little nuts

OK, so today is September 11, and I was thinking about doing a post about that, but what am I going to say, really? How nasty people are to each other in spite of what has happened to us as a nation? How I do sort of miss the genuine politeness that people exhibited in the days/months following the tragedy? Maybe another time, but I had a different post in mind today:

I feel that, in some ways, I have reverted to pre-college levels of school. One of our professors pointed out the ways in which law school is more similar to high school than to college, and I do have to agree with some of them.

1) Lockers

We all have lockers here, in which to put our massive, massive casebooks. I try to study so much during the day that I only have to take one home each night, but last week it didn't always work. So, every day between classes, students run to their lockers and twist the combinations, creating small talk along the way.

2) Size

This year, DePaul admitted about 250 incoming students to their law school. In theory, this is more similar to a high school-size class than a college-size one. This may apply to most people, but not to me, coming from a graduating high school class of over 1,000 students. However, from my high school and college years, the smaller groups I belonged to felt similar to the situation I'm in now, such as honors students in high school and the history department during college.


3) Lunch

Although I don't eat it in the cafeteria anymore, I do bring a sack lunch just about every day, which so far has been more of a throwback to my elementary school days than anything. Almost every lunch that I have brought has been some variation of the following:


Peanut butter sandwich, strawberry fruit roll-up, Capri Sun, and a travel pack of Pringles. I blame Rob and Diane for getting me into Capri Sun again (from our Starved Rock trip of summer 2005). And, for those of you who are up on your Sesame Street / Mr. Rogers trivia, the title of this post refers to the peanut butter sandwich of my lunch box. (Remember that short video? "It takes a lot of little nuts to make a jar of peanut butter...")

Anyway, for those reasons, law school does remind me a bit of high school. Certainly not in the subject matter, but at least in the way of life.