Y'all Come Back Now

My summer legal internship at Unnamed Southern Corporate Headquarters is, at long last, within close sight of its end. The $64,000 question of the week has been, "Sooo, ya lookin' forward to gettin' back up to school?" And the sickest part of all is that I really am. Because, as if starring as the aggrieved title-character in last year’s sleeper hit documentary 1L: Academic Bitch-Slap wasn’t enough for me, I’ve decided that the redemptive qualities of the sequel, tentatively titled 2L: The Bitch Slaps Back, will really bring the narrative full circle.

Actually, I’ve just always been one of those insatiable geekwads for whom school was the cure for summer, not the other way around. Oh sure, the days of yester-year spent lolling around the house in my underwear while eating pancake batter and kicking eight kinds of ass on The Price is Right from my sofa were golden … but that gets old after a few weeks. [wait? it does?] As the years have progressed, going back to school maybe hasn’t prompted the same thrill it once did back in the second grade, but its still a welcome return. Particularly with law school; there’s not so much any excitement factor lingering, its more like more an anxious exasperation of c’mon let's just get on with this already, shall we?!

There is, however, unbridled joy to be found not in going back to school itself, but because it also means going back to Boston. Everyone I’ve spoken to recently about the summer has commented in some way about how fast it has flown by, whereas I would describe it as more of a slow, tedious crawl. After two and a half months, I feel like I’ve been in Tennessee forever but also like I don’t belong here, all at the same time. The East Tennessee landscape is beautiful- honestly, just breathtaking. And I have met some of the most wonderful people. But the summer has shown me that, despite having lived in quite a few disparate parts of the country growing up, that I must be much more of a bonafide coastal city girl than I previously realized. I do not want to belittle or put-down the Middle America Red State Experience, but my response would be a resolute thanks but no thanks to ever doing it again.

So its back to Boston for me. Back to law school. Back to the harbor and the Red Sox and the Pru gleaming across the horizon. Back to casebooks and the law library and Stuart Hall dining. Back to friends and bar-hopping and the green line and Jim’s Deli. Finally, back home.