…and, surprisingly, I won.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. This is a stupid thing to say since, really, every day is the first day of the rest of your life. Unless you plan to start living backwards, which I don’t. Today is also the first day with my new Alma Mater. I’m still trying it on and kicking the tires — two metaphors one doesn’t often see mixed — but I like it so far.

The last few weeks have been a crazy, incredible whirlwind of friends, fears, and beers and there couldn’t have been a more fitting end to what has been a life-changing course of study at IU Law. I’m going to try to recap it in a way that is short enough so as not to be boring, but let’s be honest: it’ll probably be long.

Going back a few weeks, several things were happening all at once (a common theme for one’s last month of law school, I imagine). I was finishing up classes, working for the Class Gift Pledge Committee, and trying to get a bar study loan so I could move to Maryland and start working on being a real lawyer.

Classes were a breeze. In what must have been a first for me, I wrote the final paper for my Civil Rights Statutes class the very day it was assigned, even though it wasn’t due for several weeks. Copyright I had been somewhat neglecting, and I continued to neglect it right up to the end of the semester when I took the final.

The Pledge Committee was one of the most disheartening and frustrating things I’ve done here at the law school. It’s also been one of the most encouraging and rewarding. So many of my classmates are generous, thoughtful people. Pledging to support our Alma Mater despite uncertain job prospects in an uncertain economy. Of course, there are always those who insist on playing the victim. So few of the people I heard explain why they wouldn’t be pledging had anything resembling a good reason. I’ve heard everything from “The law school never did anything for me” to people complaining that they lost their merit-based scholarships (because they didn’t keep the grades to maintain them). I lost a lot of respect for a certain subset of my peers. Of course, there were also those who chose not to pledge and behaved like adults (rather than spoiled children), and while we’d have rather they pledged, their demeanor instilled their stance with a sense of maturity severely lacking in some of their peers. At the end of it all, though, over 44% of our class pledged towards a record-setting gift and I’m proud to be a part of the gift and the class.

Most of the flurry of activity over the past two to three weeks has revolved around the bar study loan. Brief primer for the uninitiated: at the end of law school you receive your J.D. This, however, was deemed an insufficient amount of punishment, so before one can practice law, they must pass what’s called the Bar Exam. The Bar is a two or three day test, which aims to determine if you are minimally competent to practice myriad different kinds of law. This sounds like it should be easy, but it is not. It’s so not-easy, in fact, that companies sell review classes for upwards of $2,500. These classes tend to increase the passage rate by a significant amount and are considered all but necessary. What’s more, the summer review session (The Bar is offered twice annually) tends to cater to just-graduated law students and is run in such a manner that it is difficult to work and study for the bar. The bottom line is that many law students will get one more loan to cover this period of time and it needs to be enough to pay for the class and living expenses for a few months.

I needed that loan, and despite herculean efforts by our amazing Financial Aid staff, I just couldn’t get one. This left me in the unenviable position of having to decide whether to try and study for the bar while waiting tables, or taking some time to do something other than practice law. I chose the latter and I start tomorrow as a senior developer at a little web startup in Springfield, Illinois. The plus side of it is that I will be making enough money to start paying my loans back. The down side, of course, is that I just spent three years at law school only to become a programmer, which is kinda funny. There’s not much sense in trying to figure out what would’ve, could’ve, or should’ve been… so I’m just going to make the most of what I’ve got, confident that one day in the not too distant future I’ll be a practicing attorney, hopefully putting the bad guys in jail.

The last day of classes brought about the annual 3L Bar Crawl. This was a thoroughly good time. It was the first time in my life that I achieved a blackout, and while most folks would not be proud of this, I am. Just a little bit. It took several people swearing that I made it to Sports (one of the last bars) and some pictures of me there before I believed that I had been… and I still have absolutely no recollection of it… but I look to be having a great time in the pictures, which is heart-warming.

Finals came and went. I only had one, and I finished it in about half the time allotted. Though it was really what marked the end of law school, it was fairly anti-climactic. I then had two and a half weeks of finals to kick back and relax. I didn’t get to actually relax, though, because I spent that time simultaneously trying to find other ways to pay for Bar Study and looking for a non-legal job.

Graduation festivities kicked off this past Friday with the Graduation Tailgate hosted by Amanda’s Parents and Doug. That’s right: we tailgated our graduation. It’s the most appropriate celebration possible for a class that was known, for lack of a funnier euphemism, for drinking a lot. Mom, Kecia, and Ara came into town that evening for the law school party in the library, and we then went out to see Sixteen Candles at the Bluebird. At some point during the evening, while Mom was buying shots, we adopted Gerron, markedly increasing the diversity in my decidedly white bread family. Eventually we went home.

Graduation was yesterday and it was great. Despite my fears, Eric’s speech was excellent. It was great seeing all of my classmates dolled up in their academic regalia — it probably the first time I saw them dressed in a manner commensurate with their class, wisdom, and intelligence. It was also pretty awesome looking. Milling around with them in the lobby of the auditorium, waiting to start the show, was yet another moment of pride. I was proud of myself for getting through it all, proud of my classmates for their innumerable accomplishments, and proud to be joining an amazing community of people as an alumnus. The only thing that was wrong with graduation was that my Dad wasn’t still around to see it. While I’m coming to realize that this will be the case any time something noteworthy happens in my life, it doesn’t make it any less sad.

After graduation was a great little dinner party put on by my dear friend Jenny and her parents, and later that evening I joined a group of fellow alums at The Upstairs for one last hurrah. I was exhausted when I left, but I still didn’t want to go… cliche or not, it was truly was the end of an era.

At this very moment I’m procrastinating. I have to pack, load up as much as I can, and drive to Illinois. I start work tomorrow morning at 8:30.

I’m going to miss these people.