baby's first day at law school

I am feeling rather fragile at the moment, having fallen afoul of everything today from crockery to topography to the local constabulary. The last straw was probably the collapsing of the top shelf in the cupboard where we keep the plates, so poor sebastienne had a dozen heavy ceramics land on her feet and the rest of us thought, for a long, long moment, that the apocalypse was beginning in our kitchen. I had a bath, but it didn't really help; next door are having a screaming row in inimitable, husky-voiced fashion, and the cat has just pulled out my power cable. With her teeth.

I got my last training contract rejection yesterday. Part of me wants to jump up and down and wail what's-wrong-with-me (actually, at the moment, a lot of me wants to do that), and part of me is being more rational (well, no, there's a different part of me who met someone today who has a contract with Freshfields and thinks, shockingly, that she's a bitch) and saying, well, it's not that bad, it's really not, I have a two-year window for this, it's not the end of the world, but. But, it's still rather unhappy-making. shimgray points out that I was in nursery and then in ESL education and then primary school education and then secondary education and then in higher education and now in vocational education and next year in professional education - and maybe having 2010 off will be good for me. I have no doubt he's right, and there is a wonderful, ethereal allure to wondering what I could do with the time, what adventures are out there to be had. But right now I'm grumpy, and wish the world would stop getting at me today.

Today was, however, my second day of law school. Yesterday was spent mostly doing admin-related things, like enrolling and finding out what my email address is and signing forms, that sort of thing, with an hour in the afternoon to explore, so I went out into the sunshine and had a look around. The campus is stupidly, ludicrously beautiful; it's at the top of a hill, set out immaculately with flowers and water among stonework with a view stretching off for miles of open country all around. I ducked in and around paths and trees and almost lost myself more than once, but it was beautiful. I returned in time for a two-hour lecture on the common law, and spent my day today being lectured on sources of statutes and the idiots' guide to contract, and to my amazement, enjoyed it all. I've not been in a classroom situation for years - sitting still for two hours! do not want! - but you get used to it again quickly, and it helps that I enjoy the material itself, as well as enjoying the process of learning. For the first time, I'm getting to learn a lexis and a process, not vaguely but specifically, so I can clearly the shape of how in nine months from now, I will be a baby laywer, I will have that body of technical expertise. I'm kind of tired of being a liberal-arts dilettante. I want to be good at something.

And, also? Today I knew stuff. Today I sat in a group situation and told three men they were wrong, something I have never been able to do easily even when they were wrong, and it was a persnickety, arsey, technical point, and they were wrong. And it's different, being a graduate, even if you aren't doing a real postgrad degree; it gives you a kind of inner reassurance that no one ever told me about. Sort of, you did your Finals, nothing will ever be that bad again. Yesterday I was sitting on the grass with two other women on the course, and this boy came along wearing a student-union t-shirt, and he pounced. "Freshers!"

And proceeded to tell us, at great length, how great freshers' week is, and how drunk you can get, and how crap central Oxford is, because it's all run over with people from Oxford, and how crap they are, so boring, did we know the type?

Having done my absolute best not to burst out laughing at any point, I finally said, as lightly as possible, "I was at Balliol. And she was at St. Hugh's, and she was at Lady Margaret Hall."

He slunk off, embarrassedly, and I felt suddenly very old. It's funny; most of the time I don't feel any different from my eighteen-year-old self, but... yeah. I'm older, in more ways than the obvious. There are a lot of former PPEists knocking around, and even more Oxonians, and it's quite nice; the people are mostly nice, actually. I don't know what I expected, but I had a very first-day-at-school feeling about it all - "What if no one likes me? What then?" - but I met people and talked to people and came home at the end of the day, tired, with five textbooks of a thousand pages each (contract, criminal, EU, land law, and contract again) but I made it through the door. I might be okay at this.

In short, I might be okay at this, and am probably not wholly unemployable. I'm just feeling gloomy, so I'm clearing out of the Mousehole tonight. It's a cold night, clear, lovely.