one year down, three to go

Classes have already ended, fully concluding my first year in law. It fills me a bit with nostalgia, and  I cannot help but look back at the things I encountered here.

Going to law school full time after a two year of break from university life threw me out of the loop.

1. Its a bit disconcerting to find classmates born in the 1990s when all this time I thought of them as kids. Its been a while since I've encountered doodles on page margins like these --->
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. It also put social life to a ground breaking halt ~ no more gimmicks or movies on payday nights, good bye to sleep-all-day-mall-till-it-closes weekends and hello to reading two reams of paper every week, and making digests/notes for each case you've read (ranges from 300-700 cases/ per subject/semester).
   
3. Sometimes I am filled with guilt about all the paper law students consume in a year (I swear when I become a hot shot lawyer I shall start contributing to Oplan Kalikasan or other tree planting organizations)
   
4. I used to go to school with just my wallet, a pocket notebook, Gtech 0.3 and a cellphone;
   Now I bought my first ever pencil case completely loaded with highlighters (replaced every week?); I have a P500 Yea! binder (most expensive ever, with 3 holes for future taking-apart and binding purposes), stapler, post-its, 3M banderitas, folders and tons of binder clips. My bag is so heavy that a boyfriend carrying it would consider it as a work-out regimen.
   
5. Time Management + Study Habits are forced to be formed.
   
6. Dealing with the relative vacuum- In relation to #2, law students are generally unaware of other things not related to law, case in point: When Chem Pavilion was burning which was across our building + Sunken Garden, we did not know about it at all until the next day because it was already on TV patrol. Sometimes you feel you haven't seen your outside world friends for two weeks so far when in reality you have been out of touch for 5 months already and then you wonder whether has it been that long really.
   
7. Drinking coffee is now Mandatory.
   
8. People only need 4 hours of sleep to function. Sometimes even less
   
9. Sedentary lifestyle. Do not bother with gym memberships, you will not go to it. Try buying a treadmill instead, one that comes with a book stand like what Sandra Bullock had in the opening of the movie, The Proposal.