16.67% Completed.

I made it.

Barely. I survived my first semester as a 1L in the twilight zone known as law school. And now, as I have to start earnestly thinking about buying books and doing my reading (yes, reading—which was assigned around the beginning of December, though we were yet to suffer through finals), I feel like my life is on pause while the rest of the world storms past me in fast forward.

It’s all so surreal; my roommate now works 60 hours a week at her job, my best friend is getting married in July, other friends are bringing new life into the world, and I’m stuck in a black hole of grad school, a place where adults pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to pretend to be college students again. So while Rachel tends to Ben Bernacke and Kara saves lives, I’m sitting in a lecture surfing Facebook or playing Tetris. I don’t work 40 hours a week or bring home a salary or raise children. Nope, I still live my life in semesters. I fill my brain with an unending amount of case law and study for finals and pretend to pay attention in class.

So it’s strange. It’s strange to feel like a kid though you’re about to turn 23 and your friends are off doing grown-up things like working and getting married and having kids of their own. But I made it. I survived the hellish experience known as being a 1L. I didn’t sleep, I read thousands of pages of court cases, I started drinking caffeine again, and I became a big fan of B minuses. I made it.

Uh, only 2.5 more years to go?