There's no place like home

So the first two days of orientation are under our belts. I've tried to meet as many people as possible and there are a ton of interesting stories to be heard.

I should be doing my reading, but there isn 't very much and I am still a buzz from the adrenaline necessary to get me out of bed today and keep me from falling asleep.

I did not have to spend as much on books as I thought I would. That is great because everything is going on credit cards until my aid comes through. I will incur all sorts of fees tomorrow for late payments, but since it is really the law school paying themselves, I'll be damned if they are going to charge me any late fees. I've been in the aid office so many times that even though I smile, they must be tired of seeing me and having to explain their archaic accounting methods to me. There is a separate office that is actually responsible for giving me the money and I have had to initiate dialogue between the two to try and get my money awarded under the correct code so that it can be delivered to my account. And even though the law financial aid office can see the true tally, the info being sent to me offically from the school is wrong. But somtimes the law finaid office is wrong so I have to keep going there and going through every detail, every item added or subtracted to make sure that I am getting what I was promised and not borrowing 13,000 extra dollars (as I was last Thursday).

I have never encountered so much paperwork and most of it is electronic. I have 2 logins and I cannot keep all the urls straight or remeber all of the passwords. If I ever lose my computer, it will be worse than losing my wallet.

We have had a few seminars on prepping for class and the personalities are beginning to show. There are 2 people who raised their hands quite a lot. One used a ton of jargon in a way that is like using a baseball bat in the outfield -- right game and technically right use (hitting the ball), just at the wrong time. The other guy has a slow and meandering way of talking that at first lead me to believe it would be best to ignore his comments. WRONG. He's way out in left field, but making the play. I never would have taken the matters in the direction he did. I think they call this a unique perspective. I'm hoping we have classes together so I can hear more of his thoughts and hopefully break out of my own comfortable ways of thinking.

I wonder if I am going to like all this learning as much as I think I will right now at this very moment. It wasn't until the end of college that I found my niche and started taking classes that I enjoyed and in which I really learned something. I don't remember a bunch of facts and dates, but the classes changed the way I saw myself, my history and introduced me to scholarship to which I could relate and that I respected. Is it a coincidence that my Profs were black and that I was learning about black American literature, music and history? Nope.

But, I don't want to be ghettoized either. Minority issues, literature or culture is minority because we have smaller numbers, not necessarily smaller influence. We, in the USA, share much of the same historical and cultural antecedents and all of us in each category are who we are because of those of all races who have gone before and influenced us. We do not live in a fucking vacuum (or why is February "Black History Month" instead of American history month?) There would be no Rolling Stones without R&B and the Blues. I am black, but my mom and family and husband are white. So as I look toward my future as a lawyer, artist and perhaps academic professor, I am looking for ways to navigate, reevaluate and re contextualize all this compartmentalization. And I have a lot of fodder for thought already as the self segregation has begun in force at the law school.