2008-04-17 - 9:20 p.m.

The last few weeks have been hazy and surreal. I've been attending all sorts of law-school-related, end-of-the-year, goodbye-forever parties and dinners. The end of law school totally sneaked up on me, and now I'm ordering graduation announcements, getting my cap and gown, and plotting how I intend to go about passing the bar in July. I can't believe I graduate in less than a month! It feels like I only started a few weeks ago.

My biggest regret is not having made friends earlier. During the first year and a half, we were living in Long Beach, and I was your average disengaged commuter student. All my favorite friends lived in Long Beach, and I had this snooty sense that law school students weren't "my people." But in the last year or so, I've put in more effort and realized there are a ton of people I absolutely love in my class. And the whole "my people" thing is so juvenile, I'm embarrassed to have harbored such a high school-ish notion. I'm not going so far as to say that I don't think there is such a thing as my people. I mean, I see them everywhere here in Silverlake (and now migrating to Highland Park). And I see them at This American Life events. And I saw them the other night at the Stars of the Lid show at the Echoplex. But I feel lame for having been so simple minded. My law school friends are hilarious and witty and nerdy in a new, special caliber of nerdiness. I'm feeling all the sadness of a high school senior realizing she probably won't keep in touch with her friends who are going off to far-away colleges. I need to get better at keeping in touch with people. I'm pretty lousy at it, and Erik's even worse than I am. Even in the age of Facebook, I think it's just not the same as seeing people every day. It's like that "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg" essay by Malcolm Gladwell, where he says we're friends with the people we actually do things with, not necessarily the people we resemble. I actually found this idea sort of depressing, but I guess it's pretty accurate.

I guess the good news is that I chose the firm I'll be working at come September, in part, based on my belief that the people I met there while interviewing were my people, whether because they were bearded and bespectacled*, or because they had traveled around South America in a VW van. And over the course of working there for ten weeks last summer, I could tell I was right. So, here's to new nerdy friends. One is silver and the other is gold. In the meantime, I have to take three daunting exams, graduate, and take the bar.

* I do not mean to say that I'm bearded.

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