let's not reenact Mean Girls in law school, yeah?

A number of people (including me) have compared law school to high school, which is true in many respects. And that's not an entirely positive analogy because we like to dismiss most of the petty and silly things we did back then as a consequence of immaturity and not knowing better. College opens the doors to a wider worldview, purportedly, and a better understanding of ourselves and those around us. So we'd like to believe - but then law school takes people who've all graduated college, some of whom have worked for a number of years, some who are married (but I don't see this as much in married students because they are far too busy living their real lives and handling real responsibilities on top of school that they don't tend to engage in the following) and makes them all regress.

We have lockers, we have the equivalent of prom, we have one building to which we're essentially confined, we have small classes and cliques and hooking up within groups of friends - we have the reemergence of petty feuds and awkwardness, of value attached to who's in the top 10, top 5 percent of the class. We see again the pervasiveness of gossip.

That isn't to say gossip wouldn't exist otherwise - I hear it's fierce in workplaces, where conditions are similar and therefore prime breeding ground: small groups of people who see each other every. single. day. As if that for some reason justifies the sudden nosiness into who is sleeping with whom, or who was once interested in whom, or who has a grudge against whom. It happens there and it happens here and it's frankly, in my opinion, entirely unpleasant to have to deal with.

Sure, it occurred with some regularity in college too (hell, I was in a sorority, I can definitely tell you about drama), but at the kind of huge public university I was in, you didn't get the same kind of small groups and enclosed spaces. You weren't forced to see the same people day in and day out. There was a lot more personal space - physically and emotionally. So while gossip still occurred, it wasn't with the same sort of regularity or intensity of circulation, I feel.

Law school is proverbial high school all over again; and I say proverbial because, looking back on it, my actual high school experience was nothing so clichéd. I wasn't in the popular crowd (was there a popular crowd? an amorphously defined one, perhaps) but I talked to people in it; I wasn't outcast although I think I tended towards hanging out with people who might be termed (dictated by high school clichés) "geeks": i.e., theater and manga fans, creative writing and ~expression~ fans. But I didn't identify 100% with them or with the "smart nerdy Asian" crowd or the artsy crowd. Whatever it was, high school was fine. Immature and awkward, yeah, but not a TV drama.

Law school? Is more like a TV drama. Not just in terms of personal experience but also in what I've witnessed other people going through or doing - and I find it all pretty sad. You'd think people would grow out of this kind of petty, gossipy mindset. You'd think people would be more concerned with professionalism and making real connections with others (similar to high school, you all tend to scatter after graduation, but now you're at an age where you can handle that kind of distance in a friendship...presumably) rather than worrying about who's dating whom or sleeping with whom or did you see how drunk she got that other time, oh my god.

There are probably all sorts of factors contributing to this kind of mindset or behavior but I don't really care about the reasonings behind it. I guess I just want to say flat out that I'm uncomfortable with how much people gossip and talk behind people's backs, and it bothers me even more when I catch myself inadvertently contributing to it. I don't want to be that kind of person. I can't pretend I'm wholly innocent because I know I've done it; but I don't like it and I really would prefer to not participate in it. So while I can't make others quit, I figure I should at least be more careful about what I say and watch myself so I don't end up participating in it again just to feel bad afterwards. It can't hurt to let people know that I'd prefer they not gossip around me either, but it's more a matter of being responsible for my own actions than for theirs.

Because, hey, I know I definitely do not appreciate people talking behind my back - for good or ill but in general - and in that vein I will try not to do that to others. It's not a fun experience (thank you, anon memes). Let's try to just live our own lives and let others live theirs; accept them as who they are for their faults (or virtues) and, you know, mind our own business. There's a line between friendly concern and friendly joking and plain nosiness and perpetuation of gossip; I'd rather not cross it.


Not impressed with high school behaviors in a professional school.