STAFF WRITER SAM MICHAELS, BUSINESS MANAGER ADAM CEPLER , LAYOUT EDITOR HEATHER PRINGLE,
EDITORS- IN-CHIEF TRAVIS WEAGANT AND CASS DA RE, STAFF WRITER EVAN IVKOVIC , LAYOUT EDITOR MARIE PARK,
NEWS EDITOR CITLALLY MACIEL, AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF KAROLINA WISNIEWSKI.
The three of us sat in 0014G of the Ignat Kaneff building. As the sun set on one of the last Fridays of Cass and Travis’ law school careers, the mood in the Obiter office took a nostalgic turn. After unsuccessfully attempting to piece together the events of the Dean’s Formal that took place a week earlier, the last meeting of the 2013-2014 Obiter Dicta editorial board meandered towards decidedly more introspective territory. What follows are the sage words of your outgoing EICs, as they answered my (sometimes inane) questions and shared the wisdom they’ve amassed in their years as law students.
Karolina: So how do you guys feel about graduating? Are you excited, depressed, nervous? What’s the consensus on all the feels?
Travis: The feels haven’t really set in yet.
Cass: I don’t think I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ve never been out of school. I did JK to JD so I’ve never been an adult.
K: Well, at least the regularity of your student lifestyle will remain. You’ll have to be somewhere everyday at like 8 o’clock, right?
C: That’s optimistic. I’ll be articling at a downtown firm, and I’ll be getting there at 6:30 am so…
K: What’s the bar situation?
C: I’d like to go.
K: To one?
C: Yes. There’s like a black box in my brain that I have filed it in. I don’t want to think about it.
K: Are you going to start studying as soon as exams end?
T: You don’t have to. They send you the stuff…I don’t really read.
C: Problem.
T: I can read, I just don’t enjoy it.
C: Key skill for next Editor-in-Chief: literate.
K: That would help. So are you guys daunted by the prospect of reading those five thousand pages in preparation for the bar?
C: Travis and I both have such different law school styles. I’m the type of person that has to know and read everything…
T: And I haven’t read anything past a headnote since first year. All of law school has been a chance for me to game the exam system.
C: But there are just so many ways of approaching law school. If by the end of this you find out you don’t like the law – some of us do, some don’t – how do you manage that?
K: That’s the thing. So many people have this idea of what law school is like. I know I did. And I got here and realized it isn’t like that at all. I think it took me a long time to accept that.
T: Ok, this is on point and I really need to share this anecdote with the Osgoode student body. There is a true intellectual giant here at Osgoode, who I think has gotten to the center of everyone’s reason for coming to law school, and his name is Waleed. A couple of weeks ago I was judging the Osgoode Cup. Someone was chatting with him and he asked them why they came to law school and they responded that they loved the law. And Waleed said: “No, you like the law – you love The Good Wife.” And I just went, “Oh my god. Yeah.” Matter of fact, last semester I binge watched The Good Wife instead of studying for exams.
K: I’ve become basically the world champion of binge watching TV since I came to law school.
C: So much TV.
K: While we’re on the topic, which Real Housewife are you most like, and why?
C: I wanna be Lisa! She runs her own business. And she wears so much pink. She drives her own car. She’s the only housewife that still drives. But really, I’d like to be a mob wife. Don’t put that in.
T: No, put it in.
C: I feel like the mob wives are the most badass.
T: You know, there’s a whole show about that too.
C: Yeah, it’s called Mob Wives.
T: I was thinking of The Sopranos.
K: There’s clearly a divide here. Different calibers of TV watching.
C: Let’s give Travis a housewife identity. First we have to decide which city.
K: I feel like he’s probably –
K & C (in perfect unison): New York.
T: You have to explain yourselves!
K: They’re very high strung.
T: You could have chosen a better characteristic than that, if you had to sell to me why I’m a New York housewife….
C: They are the most high-brow. They really are cultured.
K: So which New York housewife is he?
C: LuAnn. She was married to a Count. She’s got a level of international class.
K: Worldly without being obnoxious.
C: I mean, a little obnoxious.
T: Thanks.
K: We’re all a little obnoxious. I like that we’re all psychoanalyzing each other.
C: This is part of the Obiter editorial board; it’s part of the creative process.
K: It’s totally part of the creative process. Ok, next question. What’s your favourite law school memory?
T: I’ve destroyed all of those, with beer.
C: Tom Johnson. In general.
K: I could’ve guessed those. If you were going into law school now, what would you have done differently?
T: I would’ve written my first year exams a little better. I would also have worried a lot less about my first year exams.
C: I would’ve held on to some more direction. I got really caught up in the idea of being a law student and what you’re supposed to do without any real introspection or respect for what I wanted to do. If I had more direction, I might’ve been in a different space. And the thing is that at the end of it, you are in a good space, no matter what.
K: Minus the articling crisis.
T: What crisis?
C: We get it, London.
T: Look, all I’m saying is that if you have a C average and you don’t wanna leave Toronto, then yeah, there’s a crisis. But if you’re flexible in where your law career takes you, then you’ll be fine.
C: And if you do that, you get a whole different understanding of work-life balance. Like you probably won’t be in the office on a Sunday.
T: You can do that? I don’t know how to get into my office on a Sunday.
K: What was your most awkward interview experience?
T: The firm I am articling at, I interviewed with in first year, and I wasn’t hired. And when I came back to interview in second year, the lawyer said he remembered me from last year and had no questions for me. I work there now, so he was obviously messing with me. But it was awkward.
C: It’s a good lesson. Every single year you better add something to your experience. In a world where everyone’s always getting better, getting better is your job. Being good is never good enough. Not in Toronto, and definitely not downtown.
T: That’s what I’ve told people. All you need is one good story for OCIs. They’re gonna ask a series of questions and they’ll remember one good story. Try not to make it about alcohol.
K: Who was your favourite lecturer?
C: I really will miss Michael Mandel. He was a big part of my first year. I feel very honoured to have been one of the last classes he taught.
T: I’m not going to pretend that I loved every class I took or even that I think that everyone on faculty is a great lecturer.
K: Off the record.
T: No, put it on if you want. But Marilyn Pilkington will never know how I admired her from afar for an entire semester. I’ve never been so comfortable with so much material, but she’s just able to convey her knowledge, which is massive, in such a clear and easy way. I don’t think I’ll ever have a lecturer like that ever again.
K: What will you miss most about Osgoode?
C: My fellow EICs, obviously.
T: Well of course I’ll miss the Obiter. I went to a meeting in September of 2011 and I haven’t not been part of it since. It’s been something I stuck with the whole time and really enjoyed. I didn’t think there would be something I would do for free that would engage me in this way.
K: Spoken like a true law student.
T: I’m not gonna miss class. But I will miss-
K: Passy!
T: I actually liked living in Passy because I was so close to school all the time. The thing I’ll miss most is being able to go to the JCR and have a beer at the law school I go to and have a chance to chit chat with everyone I know.
C: I’m going to miss this office.
K: We basically lived in it this year.
T: Somebody asked me – off the record – about the couch. Whether it’s been used.
K: What does that mean?
C: Oh, like christened?
T: Yeah.
C: I hope not.
K: I’m sure it hasn’t.
T: I mean, not by me.
C: Not me!
K: Not me!
C: I feel like this is a drinking game. Not it!
[Redacted.]T: Back on the record.
C: Yeah, so the Obiter is something I stuck with for all three years. And I wouldn’t have been here if not for Karolina. I won’t forget that first week of 1L, you told me: “There’s free pizza, we have to go.”
K: I was like: “We’re gonna be on the newspaper and we’re gonna be friends.”
C: I really enjoyed seeing how other people write and giving them a space to do something that’s in law school but doesn’t have anything to do with it. The Obiter gives people an outlet to be creative and honest about life inside and outside the institution.
T: That’s why I was so willing to put my time into this thing. It was rewarding and there was a tangible result, and people like doing it.
K: Well if that doesn’t incite half the student body to join the Obiter, I don’t know what will. All it took for me was some dude yelling as I walked by the Obiter table at clubs fair: “Join the Obiter, it’s not pretentious at all!”
T: Well, we showed them.
C: Did we ever, LuAnn.