The Benefit of the Doubt
During orientation week, a 3L advised us on “the two most important things in law school.” The first was to buy one of those laptop bags on wheels, so that you could more easily carry around your books, and the other was to always have a ruler in the bag, for helping you with highlighting or underlining on your commute.
I wrote it off as BS. After all, I’m in pretty good shape, modulo a couple of discs in my back. Law books are heavy but not that heavy. As for the ruler, obviously that was for people without a steady hand.
Five weeks later…I wake up this morning with my back as stiff as a board. My shoulder-strapped laptop case has been packed full since my first class: laptop, power cord, Ethernet, pens, pencils, paper, highlighters, headphones, spare glasses, snacks, umbrella, and yes, not one but usually two huge books. The prime culprit is the 1300 page Torts casebook, but the others are not much better. Not only is my back sore where my bad discs are, it’s sore in other places, as are my neck, shoulders and arms.
As for the inside of these books, you’ll find pages where yellow, green and blue are splashed in seemingly random patterns are I attempted highlighting on a train going 70 MPH around turns and over crossings.
So, he was right. This weekend I’m getting the laptop case on wheels and the ruler.