The 5 Unfortunate Things about the First Day Back at School, as a 2nd semester 1L:

1.   It’s the first day back!
As a 1L at Pepperdine, you get two weeks off. Yes, two incredibly short, unfulfilling weeks. Whether you live down the road or on the other side of the world, a release from the endless stress of this environment is welcoming. Two weeks isn’t enough time to wash the sweatpants you wore all December in the library.

2.   Wait, we have 5 classes?
Not only did we run home, take a cat nap, and wake up to the dings of our phone receiving new syllabi emails, but…there’s 5 of them? Thankfully, we still have Legal Writing with Professor Reed, so the extra weight of Ethics can (hopefully) be managed.

3.   No grades.
So we spent the month of December crying, not showering (you know who you are), and getting by on minimal sleep, but we did all that work and still don’t know our results. Personally, I’m not complaining, I don’t think I’m ready to see how hard I need to work this semester, but considering we are paying a pretty penny in the next week for tuition, it would be nice to know where we are in the pack.

4.   We are STILL 1Ls.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Unfortunately this is not a sweet case. We can call ourselves 1Ls, but we are freshmen, sitting at the bottom of a food chain. It’s nice to think we still have interesting classes to take and so much to learn, but…we still have SO much to learn, and read., and be tested on. It’s going to be a long two and a half years.

5.   Wait, what is a job?
Apparently we should have a job lined up by now, or at least be on a solid path to having one. Unfortunately in the midst of exams, memos, and the five minutes of free time we had per day, I’ve done minimal research on summer jobs.