I decided to go to Hawai’i. I was pretty much feeling down and out in my last post and overall, which helped facilitate my decision. I also mentioned my folks were quite hesitant about Hawai’i, after finding out that Manoa rejected their friend’s daughter who went to law school they ended up switching their attitude. I think now they genuinely are proud of my accomplishment though, so that did help ease my decision.
I booked my flight without telling my parents and was actually surprised two months later when I found out my dad wanted to go with me (I was still in that not talking much phase with my parents). Luckily, there were four seats left on my flight and he was able to catch one a few rows in front of me. Leaving Honolulu 20 years ago it was raining when we touched down in San Diego, and I couldn’t help but feel a sense of nostalgia as the sky was blanketed by clouds when the plane took off.
There was no transition from working full time. My last day of work was Friday and orientation was the very next Monday. In that time my dad reacquainted himself with Oahu, we found out the Navy Exchange was rebuilt in a new location and is pretty ballin’. Last year, before I even considered the thought of going to school here, I had a dream of our home here out of the blue. I did somewhat take it as a sign the moment I got my acceptance call. However, we did try going back to our home at the Army housing. It was somewhat depressing because it’s demolished and under construction. But the good is that those houses have been there since the 70s, so the folks who are going to live there in the future are going to have better accommodations.
So I’m living at an off campus dorm run by the YMCA. It’s been here since the 1930s around the time when the campus was founded. A month in, my room is still a horrible mess, but it does feel like home. There are lots of international students, but what surprised me the most is that there’s folks from San Diego here. The first one I met is from Poway; afterwards I met another Pilipino from Mira Mesa who’s doing his Master’s in education, and then two weeks ago another kid from PQ moved in. It’s good to know there’s some older folk here, asides from the dude doing his Master’s there’s an international doing law who’s a 2L (second year law), and another one who’s a first year Med student.
Orientation was surreal. As I said in my previous post, I was accepted into the Part-time program, which I think they’re changing to Evening program because it definitely does not feel part time. But I got to meet my cohort which was a varied bunch. At first I felt bad cause it seemed like everyone was working full-time, there are a few parents trying to transition to new work for their children. But I eventually met some other students who didn’t get into the full time program and aren’t going to be working.
It definitely does not feel like part time. Maybe it’s the nature of the curriculum or that it’s a graduate program, but I literally have things I could be doing every second. A technique that my legal research and writing professor gave in order to avoid fatigue was to switch to one of the other multiple tasks I have in order to keep the brain energized, which I was doing until now haha. My first real writing project was to write an “email” to an associate attorney that dealt with a hypothetical client asserting American Indian hunting rights. That was a page and a half. The week before it was due we were also assigned to write a 10-13 page memo on another hypothetical client that happened to be parents whose daughter was from being cyber bullied at a prep school because she was smart and low income. This was intentional to simulate working for a firm.
Being Part-time they won’t allow us to go over 11 units (12 being full time). So I only have the legal research and writing class and one of the traditional 1L courses Contracts. Contracts is typically a two semester course, but they compressed it into a 1 semester course, so I have my final for it next month O_O. After having 5 years of the quarter system, it is nice being in the semester system.
That’s it in a nutshell really. Not only am I studying during the week, but if I don’t do work over the weekend I fall behind. Fabulous. Though honestly, I am enjoying the hell out of it so far. It’s been awhile since I’ve been challenged academically and it is nice being back in school. I just hope the economy clears up soon. So for now I’m off to interpret some Pennsylvania statutory law! -_-
No comments:
Post a Comment