I started school and now I have no life

So, it turns out that the reason everyone is so agog that I go to Harvard Law is that they didn't know I truly desired to have any semblance of a normal life sucked out of me by the end of the first week. It's a strange desire. I think most people truly only want to do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay and have enough to be comfortable and happy but not so much as to fear that people are only being nice to them because they want to hold their family members for ransom later. But not me. Oh no- I want to read very complex and technical (and often contradicting) material for 5 or 6 hours a day, be continually tripped up by trick questions and ridiculous hypotheticals in class, and spend any remaining hours discussing policy with similarly situated people until my brain hurts- all in preparation of one 6-8 hour final that determines my grade for the semester. It's tough to keep up here. I guess that's the point.

Still, I feel as though I am doing well. By the end of the day I understand what is going on (except in Civil Procedure, but no one knows what is going on in there), and I know how to apply what I know to new situations. Sometimes the work is very interesting. Sometimes it is very boring, and a lot of the time it is very long, but this is what I wanted to do and for the most part I am happy. Except...

Harvard has this annoying habit of constantly advertising a million fun things to do every night of the work week, though they must know there is no way we can go to their functions and still get our reading done. They have been in business for hundreds of years. They must know they are asking too much for us to have outside lives, and I sometimes think they are teasing us. "Harvard Law presents Free Food and Drinks and Happiness! It will be really fun! You should come out! Yay Law School!" My classmates test each other out to see if anyone is going. One or two people are. The rest of us are jealous and suspicious. "Have you finished your reading for Property?" we ask incredulously. They haven't. They are going anyway. We chalk it up to personal choice, but we know we are going home to hover our our texts with the mighty highlighter while they go out and party. And we are bitter. But the simple fact of the matter is that someone is going to be called on tomorrow, and no one wants to be the person who didn't do their reading and is tortured in front of the class.

It is a profound form of pain you just don't understand until you experience it firsthand.