Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Just Like High School

One of my favorite parts about being a Dean's Fellow is getting to chat with 1Ls. It is always funny when I hear their reactions to law school. One of the most frequent things that I hear, and that I heard myself last year, was that law school was just like high school. Going from class to class together, the cliques, the gossip, the lockers.

It seems like when people start a lot of new endeavors, people compare it to high school. College, a new job, etc. So it occurred to me: rather than so many things in life being like high school, what if high school was really a reflection of the rest of our lives.

Sure most of us change; some of us may even mature. But it still seems to me that the interactions that we have in high school are ever present in "the real world." For example, superlatives like naming someone most likely to succeed or biggest flirt are just codifying the labels we put on people in our heads today. The way we picked people to eat lunch with is probably similar to how we choose and exclude people from our social circles.

Maybe we compare everything to high school because that was when we really started finding ourselves, or something cliche like that. But what do I know? I actually enjoyed high school (and more strangely, enjoyed jr. high). The only way I can really see if my theory pans out is to have a high school reunion . . . and guess who people expect to plan it? See, they even knew then.

[Side note, Happy 26th Anniversary Mom and Dad!]

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