The first day of orientation was long. We worked from about 7am to 6pm.

Orientation leaders are flight attendants with manual labor duties: we smile, answer questions, give directions, mingle, smile some more, answer more questions, give peppy speeches, and haul tables and chairs throughout the law school.

At least the 1Ls aren’t crazy this year, so there were no Steven Slater moments so far.

I started the day as a greeter, and several of my 1L twitter followers and blog readers introduced themselves – which is always great when they don’t pelt me with oranges.

Although I don’t really know what the etiquette is for those conversations:

1L: “Hi! I’m one of your twitter followers!”
Me: “Hi! Great! Welcome to Minnesota law! Hopefully I haven’t given any bad advice!”
1L: “Oh no, I love your updates.”
Me: “Thanks!”
1L: “…”
Me: “Well, welcome!”
1L: “Okay, I’m going go over there now.”

The problem is that I do not know how much a reader has read, and I don’t want to presume any knowledge. And of course I usually have NO idea who the reader is, so the conversation is inevitably awkward.

From now on, I will just encourage people to add me to facebook and throw their blog links my way (if they have one) so I can put a face to a username. And I think more UMN students should blog. But that’s another rant…

We also had a sassy Texan-Minnesotan keynote speaker who emphasized a theme that most of the orientation leaders stressed throughout the day: “Do what is right for you.”

Isn’t that annoying advice?

A more concrete iteration of the theme is, “Status does not create self confidence. So if you do something solely for the prestige, you will likely still be self-conscious and miserable.”

Or,

“It takes far more courage to do what is right for your lifestyle, goals, and values rather than parrot your peers’ goals.”

All that advice is very abstract and nonsensical to the 1Ls. But the 3Ls listening to the keynote lecturer wanted to scream “AMEN!”

They’ll learn in time, hopefully…

I checked my voice mail after orientation. The management company for my apartment building called:

Management: “Hello, the cleaning ladies and tenants complained that the light bulbs in the hallway are burnt out. That’s something the caretaker is supposed to do. Stop failing at this. Thanks.”

So I jet to the apartment, give a new tenant his keys, and gasp in horror when I see that HALF of the lights in the building are out!

I asked one of the tenants how long the bulbs were out, and he said “Oh, since we moved in!”

And I felt like crap.

But then I realized that he was lying because he moved in two months ago and I gave apartment showings this weekend on that floor and none of the bulbs were out.¹ I bet he told the management company that the building was in darkness for months. Ugh.

The day ended with a drive to the suburbs. I needed to tell my boss that my orientation schedule is more time consuming than I expected, and I didn’t want to miss any emails.

After emailing the boss, I called tech support and learned that we have web-based mail too. Woops.

Day 2 of orientation starts tomorrow, as in… 10 hours. Time for bed.