analytics

I finally figured out how to and did install Google Analytics on this website. The results are probably slightly skewed by the fact that (1) I haven't been posting because of the bar exam and (2) none of my friends have likely been reading because of the bar exam, but nonetheless, there are people out there. People who read this. Who visit this site, presumably to see if I've updated. People who then "bounce" when they see that I haven't.

(I could never pull off saying bounce in real life, like "this place is lame, let's bounce" but it's the real word that Google uses to explain people who don't click through to other areas of the site, but rather read the first page and leave. Who clicks through to other areas of a blog on a regular basis is beyond me, but Google seems to think I ought to be worried that y'all are all bouncing. I'm not.)

Anyway, I've been obsessively checking the analytics (of course) since I installed them, and it has spurred me to post. So thank Google, all of you who've been waiting for this.

I realized something last night, as I was sitting here doing flashcards (again), unshowered (still) and alone. It occurred to me that this is the worst month I've had since December 2006. That September, I had started law school, and it did not go well. I had gone in thinking this is exactly where I belonged and came out not sure I was fit to belong anywhere. I went in knowing I wanted to be a lawyer and came out not sure I wanted to be anything. I went in thinking I was smart and came out sure I was the dumbest person the school had ever admitted. In short, it sucked.

But September was far from the worst of it. The worst came only after Thanksgiving. See, pre-Thanksgiving, I had this fantasy that I was going to quit school and do something else...anything else. I was going to work retail or go get my masters in philosophy or join the Peace Corps. It didn't matter. I could leave. I could get away from that terrible place and its psychological abuse and its terrible books you couldn't possibly read and rampant, permeating douchebaggery. I was going to leave. But after Thanksgiving, the jig was up. I wasn't going anywhere. I'd already spent well over $15,000 on that psychological abuse. How was I going to pay that off with a retail job? But worse was the fact that after Thanksgiving, I had to start studying for finals.

This is not to say I hadn't studied pre-Thanksgiving. Well, actually, it is. Law school, I imagine, is a unique beast. There is, for me at least, a sizeable amount of work that goes into "being prepared" for class. This, for me again, generally entailed reading a lot of cases and then distilling them into notes for myself. That takes time. In my first semester, it was generally taking me between 5 and 7 hours a day, in addition to the time I spent in class. (It wasn't until much later I got any faster.) So anyway, after Thanksgiving I had to put in those 5 to 7 hours PLUS an additional 4 or so "actually studying."

And I was so fucking lonely. I had made some friends that first semester, of course, but it's hard to be a total nutjob with people you just met two months earlier. Particularly when those people think, sure, law school sucks, but it's not THAT bad. They studied this much in undergrad. They worked this much after college. They saved the children of Africa. Whatever the fuck they did, it was somehow better preparation for this than whatever the fuck I had done. I couldn't even remember what I had done. Who I had been. What life had been like before law school. I imagined it was pretty rad, but I didn't trust my memory. I tried to explain how awful it was to my family and to my boyfriend, and they assured me that I was very smart and it would all be fine. I felt like they were a million miles away.

Anyway, the feeling I had those first few weeks of December 2006 is the feeling I've had the last few weeks of July 2009. I feel like no matter how many hours I'm putting in, everyone else is putting in a few more. I feel like no matter how many more hours I put in, I couldn't possibly learn all this stuff. I couldn't possibly fit three more facts in my brain, I couldn't possibly understand one more doctrine, but everyone else is, so I had better. I feel like there's a pretty good chance I made a horrible mistake going to law school and now I have to just live with it.

Anyway, this is all by way of saying I should be studying right now, but somehow seeing the numbers--the fact that there are real people out there who check this sad little page and then sadly bounce away--made me feel like I owed it to you to say something. And right now, all I have to say is, to quote Marshall from HIMYM: Being a lawyer had better be AWESOME.