When I think of summer, I am taken back to northwest Pennsylvania, back in the early 2000s. There, at sleepaway camp, I wasn’t the good looking, confident, and brilliant person I am today (emphasis on confident). I was short and fat, and I hid in the woods for three straight days when the fourth Harry Potter novel was released, so I could read the book in solitude. However, times were simpler then. I would wake up at 9 a.m., go sailing on the lake, take a couple of electives (and deciding on electives did not include the painstaking decision over whether to take Trademark or Criminal Procedure), go swimming, and call it a day. Looking back on it, it wasn’t that bad.

Flash forward ten years. It’s the summer after my first year in law school. I had this idea in my head: work would be fun, on weekends I’d come to New York City and barbeque and hang out with my friends and party it up. But, boy, was I wrong.

Work during the week is interesting. I like it. I get to witness the criminal process. I see some pretty interesting drama. It’s like Law and Order, except this experience won’t last twenty seasons (although, if I could recast myself as Anthony Anderson, that would be pretty awesome). However, once I leave work, that’s when the real work starts.

I come home and handle Fall recruitment, or internships for the Fall, or internships for the Spring, or course selection. It is never ending. And, for the most part, it’s a no-win situation (it feels like I’m on the Knicks). First, Fall recruitment is completely emotionally exhausting. I spent hours looking at firms that pretty much only take the top 10 percent of the class and also partake in Fall recruitment at Ivy League schools. To be frank, I’m not in the top 10 percent (unless you add .10 to my GPA for me being awesome and another .10 for every other time I’ve complimented myself in this article), so fall recruitment is almost a complete waste of time. Then, I go onto the NALP Directory website. With this list of firms, I’m likely as successful as Snooki is at not getting punched in the face. These firms don’t even come to interview on campus at Cardozo, because they are too good for us. Lastly, there is course selection. However, I’ve been used to being disappointed with this. In college, I would never get the courses I wanted. I would attempt to sign up for interesting courses like Massage Therapy or any course that had a lot of University of Maryland basketball players in it (helllloooo automatic A), but instead I would end up with Third World Policy. So, I figured Cardozo would be no different. However, I was wrong. Although I got the courses I wanted, I did not consider the fact that being in law school has made me a neurotic, obsessively compulsive student (check my iCal for proof). So, since about the second week of June, I have been thinking about my courses and worried that I would be subjected to a dry subject. This has driven me insane.

There is also the disappointment with the weekends in the city. Shocking as it seems, the MTV show The City portrays nightlife here incorrectly (okay, I watch a lot of MTV in my free time during the summer). Although I love hanging out with my friends, getting to the city from New Jersey is a pain. First, I have to get on the NJ Transit, where I see my entire high school class going to Hoboken. Then I get off the train, and I sweat profusely for the five blocks I have to walk to my apartment. By the time I get to my friends’ apartments, I am so tired that I would rather just watch a movie or lay down (although I have acquired a finer appreciation for chick flicks).

To conclude, summer isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Besides that one week of celebration in between finals and the writing competition, this summer has been all business. So, I guess I’m looking forward to getting back to the grind of law school. Who would have thought that highlighting until my textbook looks like a box of Lucky Charms would have been a better alternative to summer break?