Stanford Law Class of 2011 Forum

[chup]

Exactly my thinking. Moving in the 19th gives me a week to get my nest all in order, maybe meet a few people casually, then I've got the few days of Orientation to get a feel for the rest of the class, all easing me into the intensity of first semester. I've got a super laid-back summer ahead of me, so I know I'm going to nee a little time to ramp it back up there.

BTW, in case anyone else is trying to figure out how to get all their stuff out to the coast without wracking up a ton of costs, consider taking the train. I'm doing it from MN to San Jose I think. It will take like three days, but the coastal leg in particular is supposed to be amazingly gorgeous. And it's like $260 for a ticket that includes 3 up to 50lb checked bags and two 50lb carry ons, plus if you need to ship more you can add additional checked 50lbs for $10 each apparently. I mean I've really gotten rid of a lot of stuff in anticipation of the move, but I've still got some books and stuff I'd really like to have with and if anyone's looked at shipping/airline baggage costs lately.... Not everyone is a train person, but I kind of love them, so I thought I'd pass the thought along.

Darlay, are you currently in the Twin Cities?

Oh, and add me to the list of those showing up on the 19th.

[Arbit]

Exactly my thinking. Moving in the 19th gives me a week to get my nest all in order, maybe meet a few people casually, then I've got the few days of Orientation to get a feel for the rest of the class, all easing me into the intensity of first semester. I've got a super laid-back summer ahead of me, so I know I'm going to nee a little time to ramp it back up there.

BTW, in case anyone else is trying to figure out how to get all their stuff out to the coast without wracking up a ton of costs, consider taking the train. I'm doing it from MN to San Jose I think. It will take like three days, but the coastal leg in particular is supposed to be amazingly gorgeous. And it's like $260 for a ticket that includes 3 up to 50lb checked bags and two 50lb carry ons, plus if you need to ship more you can add additional checked 50lbs for $10 each apparently. I mean I've really gotten rid of a lot of stuff in anticipation of the move, but I've still got some books and stuff I'd really like to have with and if anyone's looked at shipping/airline baggage costs lately.... Not everyone is a train person, but I kind of love them, so I thought I'd pass the thought along.

Darlay, are you currently in the Twin Cities?

Oh, and add me to the list of those showing up on the 19th.

Hmm. Maybe we can arrange a meetup or something for those of us who opted for the earlier move-in date, depending on how busy the actual moving turns out to be and how dead the social scene is the week of the 19th. More later.

[chup]

Exactly my thinking. Moving in the 19th gives me a week to get my nest all in order, maybe meet a few people casually, then I've got the few days of Orientation to get a feel for the rest of the class, all easing me into the intensity of first semester. I've got a super laid-back summer ahead of me, so I know I'm going to nee a little time to ramp it back up there.

BTW, in case anyone else is trying to figure out how to get all their stuff out to the coast without wracking up a ton of costs, consider taking the train. I'm doing it from MN to San Jose I think. It will take like three days, but the coastal leg in particular is supposed to be amazingly gorgeous. And it's like $260 for a ticket that includes 3 up to 50lb checked bags and two 50lb carry ons, plus if you need to ship more you can add additional checked 50lbs for $10 each apparently. I mean I've really gotten rid of a lot of stuff in anticipation of the move, but I've still got some books and stuff I'd really like to have with and if anyone's looked at shipping/airline baggage costs lately.... Not everyone is a train person, but I kind of love them, so I thought I'd pass the thought along.

Darlay, are you currently in the Twin Cities?

Oh, and add me to the list of those showing up on the 19th.

Hmm. Maybe we can arrange a meetup or something for those of us who opted for the earlier move-in date, depending on how busy the actual moving turns out to be and how dead the social scene is the week of the 19th. More later.

The Nuthouse, off of California Ave. I'll buy the first round.

[DarlayBoo]

Darlay, are you currently in the Twin Cities?

I'm currently in Chicago. In a week I'll be living in the boonies an hour north of the Twin Cities. For seven weeks surrounding two weeks abroad. It's going to be a long summer.

Hmm. Maybe we can arrange a meetup or something for those of us who opted for the earlier move-in date, depending on how busy the actual moving turns out to be and how dead the social scene is the week of the 19th. More later.

I'm down.

[Ecureuil]

Darlay, are you currently in the Twin Cities?

I'm currently in Chicago. In a week I'll be living in the boonies an hour north of the Twin Cities. For seven weeks surrounding two weeks abroad. It's going to be a long summer.

Hmm. Maybe we can arrange a meetup or something for those of us who opted for the earlier move-in date, depending on how busy the actual moving turns out to be and how dead the social scene is the week of the 19th. More later.

I'm down.

I just submitted my housing app like 2 days ago, so if I have something to move into on the 19th, haha, I'd love to just chill with you guys (and complain about my shared room in Crothers, most likely...)

[Ecureuil]

And I'm assuming it's our itsy bitsy class size that makes the SLS 2011 thread so tiny?

[Arbit]

Yeah, the small class size combined with the fact that Stanford has made things pretty straightforward. Yale people have a lot more to deal with when it comes to finding housing and actually getting to New Haven from an airport, which necessitates a bit more discussion.

Based on the people I met at the ASW, I think incoming SLS students are just as enthused as those entering into the schools that have more active 'X school class of 2011' threads.

[DarlayBoo]

Yeah, there also don't seem to be quite as many of us on here.

However, despite what I posted last, this summer's gone really really fast! My countdown widget (i.e. what convinces me to not waste all day zoning out to food network) tells me there are only 13 days left until I get on that train! Just bought a bicycle (it ships to the store in Menlo Park) and a suit and am beginning to get excited that this is really happening. Finally. For Real.

Excited?

[atomnc]

Hey Amy,

My experience with Stanford has been that they tend to look at things beyond the normal LSAT/GPA combo. Yes, numbers are important, but they seem to weigh what you've been doing outside of school a little more than some of the other top schools. (Perhaps I'm convincing myself of that fact, I don't know.) Anyway, my point is that your numbers are solid and with the PhD, I would imagine they will take you very seriously. I won't promise admission, just because it is Stanford, but I'd say you have a great shot.

Best of luck!

[DarlayBoo]

Yup yup, great essay and recs are really what it'll take. And a dollop of luck. Best!

Real reason I logged in here: does anyone know if there's an online stanford community marketplace of some sort? For books and apartment stuff etc?

[atomnc]

Not that I've seen. It seems like all of the Stanford Law communities are rather quiet. Here, facebook, the admitted students site... Blah.

[DarlayBoo]

Yeah, there's like three people on each of them.

[atomnc]

It's just funny because this particular forum has gotten almost as many hits as several of the other "___ Class of 2011" threads, but has about a third as many posts. *sigh* I hope everyone is more social in person than they are digitally (odd no one wants to talk on a computer when we'll be going to school in Silicon Valley).

[Ecureuil]

It's just funny because this particular forum has gotten almost as many hits as several of the other "___ Class of 2011" threads, but has about a third as many posts. *sigh* I hope everyone is more social in person than they are digitally (odd no one wants to talk on a computer when we'll be going to school in Silicon Valley).

Our classmates are all too busy saving orphans while researching an AIDS cure. We're clearly the slackers who have the time to check online forums, haha.

[DarlayBoo]

Wait. So everyone keeps looking to see if there's a conversation going on here but are too scared to be the person who starts one? Fuck that shit. Let's get this party started already. I volunteer myself for digital rejection. Be kind.

First, because I am lame and on the internet a lot, I finally found the goldmine of move-in info I was looking for and figured I'd pass some of it on. The housing department has like 800 links and pamphlets and shit on everything you could ever want to know about being alive in the general vicinity of Stanford.

They are here: https://www.stanford.edu/dept/rde/cgi-bin/sh/wpprod/ Check out the left hand bar of Living in Your Residence and Moving In.

Notable highlights include links to the apparent Stanford online marketplace I was looking for - http://www.supost.com/ (not a lot of activity right now, but probably not the right time) - descriptions of how you can recycle fucking everything there, that they give you a free bike light when you register it with campus police, info on joining organic co-ops, and my personal favorite: a guide to how to clean every single part of your apartment (it's practical yes, but mostly I just love that it's clearly the product of frustrated maintenance staff sitting around a computer in a basement somewhere going 'goddammit you stupid kids don't you know not to ...' as they break everything down into simple simple steps, plus several of the DO NOT's seem to have been the result of specific incidents) AND if you're really lazy/incompetent/rich they even offer a for-charge weekly maid service!

Ok, so that's more like a party of nerd info, but um, what do you want from me?

Oh, what the hell. Somebody's gotta stop being shy.

Hello. My real name is Anna. [Hi Anna!] I will be a 1L at SLS in the fall. Right now I am on the internet and not off saving babies because I am at home with my parents in rural Minnesota. I needed to relax some this summer, was going to be traveling, and my mom is going through some scary health stuff, so I wanted to spend some time with her before moving to the coast.

Anyway, the summer is going quickly, mostly because there have been three distinct parts. Part 1 was June which I spent thanking god I was no longer working for an insanely evil law firm, eating too much home-cooking, and watching huge amounts of Food Network. Part 2 was July which I spent mostly in Singapore and Thailand visiting my boyfriend. He's Singaporean and he's paying off his scholarship bond by working for the central bank there. He should be released by the time I graduate from law school. No one would pick this set-up, but we've been managing really well for over a year now and it means I get to go on really awesome trips every six months or so (Paris last fall, Morocco planned for next year). Part 3 is now. Which I'm mostly spending preparing to leave for California and for the new life out there. I hope to meet you all then and that you will be cool.

My old life? Uh, well, I graduated from the U of C two years ago with a degree in visual art. That's like a contemporary art history degree plus a studio art major. I'm a sculptor and if you drop by my apartment sometime this fall you might see a giant collage project growing (gotta do something to relax every once in a while). After graduation I had applied for a fellowship to get an MFA degree, but the application process really made me put myself under the microscope. The more I convinced the board that I should be a full-time artist, the less I thought that was good plan for me. I prefer art to be my escape, not what I need to escape from. So I shot off in another direction. I'd been working a string of weird jobs - technical theater work, putting up flyers, in-home care for an elderly alcoholic, french bakery, etc. - but throughout everything I'd been reading a lot on intellectual property rights (Lessig was my gateway drug). Was interested in law, but wanted to test it out before committing to anything/confessing to my art friends that I was jumping ship. So I spent six months working for this one-lawyer civil rights firm. I did pretty much everything in the office and did way more hands on stuff with our cases than frankly I probably should have been allowed to. It was hard and the conditions were shit, but I really just loved the work. Knew this was what I wanted and decided not to wait, so I took 6 weeks and applied to law school kind of by the seat of my pants - and got damn lucky - before going to work for the opposite end of the legal spectrum: giant super corporate firm in their marketing department. Working conditions were a lot better there and people were very nice, but the work was really awful on pretty much every level. Boring to get through, immoral to do. But I did my term there and well, now I know.

I am super super happy that I'm going to SLS. I'm coming off the nerd preserve of the U of C, so I knew I needed someplace pretty intellectual etc., but Stanford seemed friendlier and less snobby/intense than a lot of the other options. And it's gorgeous. I've spent 6 years now in some pretty gritty living on the south side of Chicago and that was cool and all, but it's cold and dangerous and racist as all get out, so the idea of boarding the good cruise ship Palo Alto for a few years sounds kind of nice. A fantasy, but nice in the short-term.

Anyway, I've just written the message board version of War and Peace (in length-only) so I'll shut up already. But I hope you all won't. Post back something in response/about yourself. PM me. Now that you know my real first name and UG, you should be able to find me through our facebook group if you want. I'm a pretty decent person, can bake a good cookie, and right now I know like 3 people out there and none of them well yet. So get friendly people!

(And if I'm coming on too strong with the friendly here you can just ignore all my personal bullshit and just talk about the move-in details. All the same to me, but this peek and scurry away shit has got to stop.)

[atomnc]

Taking Anna's lead (and thank you for doing that Anna), I'm Adam, also entering this fall as a 1L. I graduated in May from UGA with degrees in history and geography. Despite what my degrees look like, my focus is on health policy (no bio major? no poly sci? no worries!), particularly HIV/AIDS. I've done some work in DC on the issue, but most of my time was spent working on prevention in my community and training to become a counselor/tester (stupid state needed to approve everything). My undergraduate experience was really relaxed, so I'm looking forward to continuing that out in California, though perhaps without as many overtly racist people around. (Some stereotypes of the south exist for a reason...)

Outside of my life at school, I'm big into travel and photography. (I know, those are the single most generic set of interests on the internet. Kind of like "I like music." I'm sure you do, but don't we all?) I've been fortunate enough to travel to six of the continents (still trying to figure out how to get to Antarctica without killing penguins) and spent part of this summer in Paris with my boyfriend. (Yeah, I'm gay. Guess I should clarify that one now. I'll be the one that's slightly loud about voting down the marriage ban in November, just a forewarning. I'm not militant, just want to marry my boy at some point in the near future. ) He's a year younger than me, but will probably be coming out to Stanford in 2009 to start his PhD in Math (assuming, of course, he gets in).

The rest of the summer was also spent at home (like Anna!) taking care of my Mom (boo for health problems) and trying to not go through academic overload (reapplying for some stuff this year that failed last year. Not getting specific, but suffice it to say, I haven't relaxed as much as I would have liked).

Oh, and I guess one last thing, if it's not obvious, I like parenthetical comments. Makes me feel cool.

I'm getting so excited about Orientation and meeting everyone! *puts down the mic and walks away to indicate it's someone else's turn*

*EDIT* For those of you on facebook, make sure you've joined the class of 2011 group - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8636241341

[Ecureuil]

Since it was Adam's blogpost that started swaying me towards Stanford, it's only right that I'm posting after him, haha.

I'm Kevin, and I graduated from UC Berkeley a few months ago with psych and legal studies degrees and a French minor (fuzziest degrees ever, I know). My family is actually in San Francisco, so apparently my idea of being a big independent boy-man is moving a half hour away for undergrad and then an hour away from grad school. And I just need to find work in the North Bay to finish the four corners of the Bay Area.

On campus, I ran a rental law legal clinic, which was simultaneously really fun and really frustrating since there was only so much we could do for renters in the area without falling into "practicing law without a license." So we always gave legal options, and NEVER legal counsel/advice. I still don't know where the line between those two areas are. A bunch of pretty random research projects that I really enjoyed: 1) AIDS/Homosexuality in India: my personal part in this was actually translating A Political History of the AIDS Epidemic from French into English. This is clearly a book that will be a bestseller one day, mmhmm. 2) Jewish genealogy before and after the Holocaust: Been doing this for four years and it's the most amazing feeling to actually help record all these untold stories of survival. I might try to continue working on it while in law school, but we'll see how that works out. And I was the editor for some gay literary magazine. Woo.

Beyond school stuff, what kept me sane was going running and doing capoeira (you could describe it as Brazilian fight dancing?). I started shifting more and more of my time to the latter until it seemed like all I did was eat, sleep, school, and capoeira. Near graduation, I was actually skipping my schoolwork since come on, doing backflips and playing African percussion instruments totally beats sitting around and reading, yeah? I hurt myself really badly like a few months ago (my hand swelled up like a baseball mitt), so I'm looking forward to joining the capoeiristas in Stanford. If anyone in our class is into capoeira, let me know so we can check out the Stanford group together.

I've spent the summer working at this little law firm (I've been there for about 2 years) and tomorrow is actually my last day there *sniffle and cheer at the same time*! I'm planning on a road trip to various national parks in the next few weeks, but mainly I just want to roll around and relax.

Oh wow, that was a lot longer than I intended...

Looking forward to meeting everyone! Feel free to stalk/add me on facebook.

[aleeex]

Hi all! I don't know what explains the lack of online activity from the Stanford set. For me, I was never extremely active on these boards and once I had made the agonizing decision of where to go to law school, I stopped looking at them entirely. This morning I was bored and curious to see what new might be here, so I did a search for Stanford and was excited to find an active thread - though unfortunately it seems this is atypical. Perhaps we should move the virtual introductions to the Facebook group, where more people may be? I'll crosspost something similar there and see what happens. So, here goes. . .

I'm Alex (Hi!). I'm currently living in San Francisco, and was relieved to finally find an apartment in Palo Alto last week. (The apartment market down there almost feels worse than the city... which is pretty hard to stomach!) I didn't do on campus housing mainly because I have a cat, and also because my boyfriend (who won't be a Stanford student) would prefer not to live on campus. We'll be in the college terrace area though, very close to EV, so hopefully I won't miss out on the on campus social scene too much. (Also - Anna - my boyfriend is a 2006 U of C grad, too. . .there are a lot of you guys out here!)

I moved to San Francisco after graduating from UCLA in 2006 with a BS in Physics. The story of how I went from physics to law school is a little complicated, so I'll spare telling it here. In any case, I've been working at the San Francisco Superior Court for nearly the past two years (up until this past May), first on a fellowship, and then I was hired as a Program Coordinator for Collaborative Justice Programs. I know that's a mouthful - but essentially the programs are alternative criminal courts that focus on rehabilitation instead of jail/prison for people with mental illness and/or substance abuse problems. It was a fascinating experience and I loved my job. I could have kept working there, but decided that I didn't want to put off law school any more now that I finally knew it was what I wanted to do. Because of those experiences, I'm really interested in criminal law and policy, specifically with respect to prisons and the mentally ill, but I want to explore a lot of different topics in law school (perhaps some IP, given my first degree, and the fact that Stanford is the best place for it!).

I've had a nice, relatively relaxing summer, visiting family, traveling a lot and hanging out with friends in the city. I'm leaving tomorrow to take one more mini-trip (to Chicago and Michigan) before orientation starts and the studying begins! I'm really excited to meet everyone in a few weeks, and look forward to reading more virtual introductions (hint hint!).

[priyajasmine]

Ok, I guess I've been lurking long enough....Hi, I'm Priya and I'm going to be a 1L this fall as well! I just graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in econ, so I'm constantly get ragged on by my college buddies for being a 'traitor' to the Golden Bears - but I think it's going to be worth it, though, because SLS seems like an amazing place to go to school! I unfortunately didn't get to make it to the Admitted Students' Weekend, but I visited campus about a month ago, and it was every bit as beautiful as I remembered from seeing it in high school.

Going to law school makes me a bit of an anomaly among my friends and family, so I feel a bit clueless about how all this works, but hopefully I'm not the only one . While I really don't know what I want to do with my law degree, I have some degree of interest in international law, so I'm hoping that earning a JD will help me work toward a career where I get to address policy problems in developing countries from a joint law and economics perspective...I apologize if that made no sense whatsoever, like I said, I'm still figuring this all out.

My summer has been pretty relaxing, if a bit boring. I've basically been at home for the last 2 months,and apart from taking a few family vacations to Colorado (absolutely beautiful state, btw, so any Coloradans out there-- you guys are a lucky bunch! And this from a born-and-bred Californian...), Big Bear, etc, I've pretty much been sitting at home, vegetating on the couch, reading a few E&Es when I'm really and truly bored, and chauffeuring my little brother around to his various summer activities.

As far as hobbies go (watch out: nerd alert), mine consist mostly of reading (novels, esp. historical fiction, the Economist, and really any mildly interesting book I can get my hands on), doing huge, insanely hard jigsaw puzzles, singing (which I will hopefully continue until the day my shower finally throws me out), and watching old movies (any Cary Grant fans out there?).

I don't know if an official TLSers meeting place has been designated, but I'll be up at Stanford on Sunday the 24th, so if anyone is interested in meeting up for coffee, let's pick and place and get as many of ourselves together as possible!

I'm incredibly excited about orientation, and especially about meeting you all! See you guys in a few weeks!

[Ecureuil]

Oh good, I'm glad there's another Berkeley grad that can understand how our degrees are basically mortal enemies and will ensure that we get no benefits from the alumni networks of either school, haha.

Priya, have you thought up a strategy to get around that yet ?

[priyajasmine]

Hehehe...not yet, Kevin....all I can think of so far is try to avoid ever being in the same room with alumni of both schools, so that if I'm around Cal alums, I can just claim temporary insanity for having gone over to the 'dark side' for law school...and around Stanford alums, just say that I was 'young and foolish' when deciding which college to go to for undergrad...

...jokes aside, though, it's so awesome to meet another Golden Bear! We should swap war stories once we get up to Palo Alto

[DarlayBoo]

YAY! May still not have the numbers for a self-sustaining reaction here, but at least a few lurkers have been lured out into the open and we're all talking a bit. And I don't even appear to have made myself the girl everyone avoids eye contact with at Orientation! In fact mostly this is just reconfirming why I'm so excited to be going to school with you all . Happy!

So maybe the Berkeley people can shed some light on this - or the Stanford alums if there are any out there - but, so football is a big thing out there? You guys have some sort of rivalry? (fully realize I probably sound like an alien asking, 'so what is this thing you call "the sun"?') Notice there's even a football game on our Orientation schedule. Um, is this something - as grad students - that, how do I put this, will matter a lot? Not to be in any way anti-football, I just, you know, went to the U of C, and while we might have had like an astronomy team somewhere or some mathletes, the idea of team affiliation coinciding with school affiliation is going to take a little getting used to for me. Someone be kind and give me like the 5-year-old's version of what I need to know.

Priya, I'm not a Cary Grant fan (sorry, just can't get over his resemblance to a very used catcher's mitt), but I am big into Busby Berkeley and Ginger & Fred musicals, with a growing interest in early Marilyn Monroe and other B&W gems (just fell in LOVE with All About Eve). And on the nerdy hobbies angle, any Scrabble or Risk players?

BTW Kevin, I've totally got you out fuzzy-degreed! Pshaw! Come on, Psych is totally like a real major. I hear you guys even do the occasional math. Mine sounds like I've got a degree in advanced basket-weaving. I mean I appreciate you not beating me up for my lunch money, but you can't go claiming my "least prepared for the real world" prize either.

[Ecureuil]

I have to shamefully admit that I have been to exactly ONE football game as a Berkeley undergrad. So I'm sure someone else can explain the rivalry better than I can. I just know that Stanford and Cal always have these hyped-up clashes in various sports (the Big Splash, the Big Game, etc).

And fine, Anna, you've outfuzzed me with visual art as a major. Though at least you can TOUCH your sculptures..all I can do is bring up random pop psych things about not seeing the white bear, etc.

And yes, Scrabblers unite!

[chup]

What the..? People actually post in this thread now? Cool!

[atomnc]

Maybe the t-minus 1 month thing inspires camaraderie? Regardless, I'm thrilled that people want to talk.