Libraries

One of the lamer things I've probably done this calendar year, is participate in a tour of Luther College for my good friend's then girlfriend/now fiance last summer. When the highlight of the tour is showing her where we all used to sit in the library when writing our senior papers, you start to realize how less than scintillating it really was.

I'm sure other similarly lame things were pointed out - the practice room I spent hours in trying to figure out the mysteries of the low brass embouchure (kiss your hand? WTF?), where I took the LSAT, the parking lot turned bike rodeo facility, etc. Like all things though, it seems like it is the mundane, the repetitious, that becomes important. I always get the strangest flashbacks from England; they always involve me on a bus to the Notts city centre, or something similarly routine. However, when one spends three hours in a parking lot on a summer day teaching a 21 year old physics student how to ride a bike, I suppose that tends to be remembered.

The only reason this all comes to mind, is that I'm sitting in the Hamline law library, and quite like Preus in Decorah, sitting in a very particular spot. Two years ago at this time, I was very likely sitting in this same spot hyperventilating over a contracts exam. Now, the end is near. There's no more hyperventilation - I don't know what I would characterize it as. Certainly a tinge of apathy, but I'm generally not apathetic. More like, "come on, let's get done, but holy shit what happens now?"

You know, it will be fine, everything will be fine. As I sit in this godforsaken library for yet another hour though, I am positive that five years down the road, I'll slip into a daydream filled with dancing copies of casebooks, coffee, and bowtied professors...

It's really amazing that law students escape these three years with any friends.