Here's a good idea

The first night of law school orientation the entire class was invited out to a bar called Third Edition. It's a trendy bar in Georgetown with two levels, a live DJ, and an outside Tiki bar (apparently because of the palm trees and kayaks on the wall). I would have renamed this bar the Trade-off Bar. You either had to be inside where the air conditioning was blasting as much as the music was or outside where they were venting the hot air and simply standing was reason enough to perspire. Essentially it was a choice between being able to hear people while putting them off because of your sweat, or being nice and cool yet having to lean in and ask "What did you say?" every two sentences. It was not ideal for meeting our classmates.

Even less of a good idea was dancing. Everyone who was there (I think) was from school. So you would have thought that they would be smart enough not to even approach the dance floor where certain embarrassment was waiting for them. You certainly thought they would be smart enough not to dance in an incredibly risque manner with strangers, aka people who will see you in class next week. You were wrong. This happened. And people watched. And I can only hope that it was embarrassing for them. Of course it was a nice opportunity for the rest of us to lean on the bar and bond over how we were all glad we did not have poor enough judgement to grind with a stranger to a Pitbull song with the possibility of sitting next to them tomorrow.

I spent at least fifteen minutes talking about my disapproval with some people I had just met. I also spent a long time meeting people while sweating profusely at the Tiki bar. Turns out most people are older than me, yet they do not know more than me about what to expect at law school. I did feel slightly stigmatized for being so comparatively, but it's not exactly something I can help. Plus people said President Kennedy was too young when he became president, and look at him, he's...ummm dead. Oops.

Mostly people talked about law school rankings, LSAT's, where they were from, and where they were living currently. I'm sure I had the exact same conversation with about seven people. But I think that's the nature of orientations. We don't really have common experiences yet, so we just tell each other facts about ourselves hoping that will spark a conversation that is more interesting. So far most people I talk about college with either say "Oh, do you know _____?" which I inevitably do not, or they say "Never heard of it. Where's that?" They aren't the most interesting conversations I've ever had. I have tried to limit my who-do-you-know-from-college game playing with other people. So far I've only done it with one person and been slightly successful. And we actually had a fairly interesting conversation about things other than undergrad institutions and hometowns. So I'd call that a success.

As far as the people I have met go, very few people are completely awkward, which is a nice change from college. Of course it makes me guarded, because I certainly have the potential for awkwardness of large proportions. So I certainly haven't tried to make friends by asking people what Star Wars movie is the best and yelling at them until they agree it is Empire. I was talking with a guy named Matthew for a while and we exchanged concerned looks when some kid was yelling about how he had classes on Friday and was super pissed and a bunch of trivial other stuff that I don't remember because I didn't care. Hopefully I can at least get some sort of cynical mocking rapport going with some people. After all, it is one thing I am good at and used to. Bottom line so far: meeting new people kinda sucks and making new friends is a difficult, awkward process.