Slight Regression
Two full days of classes and I still haven’t been called on. That’s fine–I feel comfortable now, and I’m not worried about it–but I kind of want to get it out of the way. I have returned to moderate caffeine usage: I have a cup of coffee during my first class. HLS provides coffee in the halls. It’s much too easy.
I feel normal and comfortable here now; the neighborhood and the campus seem really familiar. I wrote before that the Harvard campus doesn’t seem “magical” the way some people might think, and this is increasingly true. After only a little while, it’s just the place that I go to school. It helps in maintaining sanity, I think, not to think too much about how my law school compares to other law schools, or how I compare to the other students here, or anything like that. I’m trying to focus on my work, think through the issues in my class reading, and figure out what I’m doing here. In some ways, it doesn’t seem so different from anywhere else.
But obviously it is different here in Cambridge–I can walk to Starbucks and hear three or four different languages along the way. I had dinner in the law school cafeteria tonight with a visiting researcher from Japan. I run into tourists all the time around campus and in Harvard Square. Apparently I look like I know what I’m doing; after a whole week’s residence here, I am frequently asked for directions.
Meanwhile, my CrimLaw professor, Jeannie Suk, saw Justice Breyer (who lives in Cambridge) at breakfast the other day, and he wished good luck to my section. And that makes me a little giddy.