Groupies

When I was trying to decide where to go to school, one of the things that was most attractive to me about Yale is the "small group" system of instruction for 1Ls. During the first few days of orientation were were kept in suspense about "whose group" we were in...but then when we got our class assignments, people had an instant identity as part of one of the 12-13 (I'm not actually sure how many there are) small groups of 15ish people.

Each small group has all of their classes together, and one class that is ONLY those 15 people plus a professor and two or three TAs (3L students who are primarily there to serve as mentors/buddies and legal writing helpers - ours like to take us bowling and out drinking, and occasionally they give us tips about how to write memos, or what classes to take, or how to get our dream summer job). The professors really make an effort to get to know the people in their small groups, and they tend to serve as a good first letter of recommendation writer...plus, the seminar style of the small group class is awesome (especially for con law, which is my small group class, where discussion really helps you work through complicated issues).

By default, the people in your small group are the people you see most often. Literally, every single day. Sometimes for 6 hours of class! So you have to like, or at least be able to tolerate, the people in your SG.

I really really love my small group! It took us a while to get bonded at the beginning of the semester, in part because we all also had friends in other small groups and through activities...we were pretty independent, as a bunch. But as we began to get tougher assignments and as we spent more time together, we found out that we all get along really well...luckily, nobody in our small group is a "gunner" in our larger classes, so we have begun to make snarky comments to each other on gchat during class making fun of said people who seem to want to just listen to themselves talk. You'd be amazed how much bonding can go on in a group gchat window!

We've also started hanging out a lot more outside of class...this week, we went out for drinks three nights in a row! It helped, of course, that we just turned in our big project for the semester - our "open universe" mock appellate court brief. So it's time to - finally! - relax, breathe, sleep, and socialize again. This weekend is the annual Harvard-Yale football game (and the annual HLS/YLS basketball game!), so a bunch of people are making the trek up to Cambridge, myself included. Go Bulldogs!