My Legally Blonde Experience: looking back to my past years in law school

Me with my day blockmates outside the ACCRA Room. Photo taken back in first year, with our temporary IDs.

I am a feeling sad with all that is happening to me right now. I do not wish to go into details but the pint is: I’m sad. RG told me to blog, perhaps because it’s one of the things I do best, so I guess I should blog about something happy. As Peter Pan would always tell Wendy, “Think of happy thoughts.”

I saw Legally Blonde The Musical on its opening night. Barring some minor technical glitches, the show was great. I don’t want to make this a review of the musical. I guess that area is left for those musical enthusiasts. Not that I don’t like musicals, it’s just that it’s a bit pricey if you do it on a frequent basis.

Perhaps few of you would know that Legally Blonde, the movie, was among my inspirations on why I went to law school. And UP Law for that matter. And no, I kid you not.

Unlike Elle Woods who got a perfect 4.0 GPA from UCLA, I was a mediocre student who gets elated with a passing grade. If there is indeed a miracle, I guess my passing LAE and surviving the first two years in Malcolm Hall would be considered a miracle. Who in his right mind would thought that someone who failed algebra, not once, but twice, would make it to the cut against hundreds, or even thousands, or cum laudes, magna cum laudes, and summa cum laudes competing for a spot on a roster of two hundred.

Law school was hard. As in rock hard. Like Elle Woods, I almost quit law school if not for friends like Darwin, Regie, Faith, and Marie. There was even a time where I thought my blockmates in the day section hate me so much (I was wrong though – they love me, I think) that I had to find a job to transfer to evening class. Reminiscing my dark moments in UP Law, the institution which promises to teach law in the grand manner, never fails to make me cry.

But like Elle Woods who finds strength from the very reason why she entered the prestigious Harvard Law School – LOVE, I always look back to why I dared to set foot onto the historic hallways of Malcolm Hall. Because I want to be a lawyer.

I remember the day of my admission interview to UP Law. Our batch was the last to undergo that dreaded interview. I was clad in green, green longsleeves, green pants, the same outfit I wore to first day of classes, because someone from the Portia Sorority LAE review told us not to wear blue. Associate Dean Patricia Daway asked me why I want to enter UP Law. I tell you, I was tempted to say “because I want to study law in the grand manner,” but not thinking of anything to impress my panel, but my lips seemed to have a life of their own, I said: “Because I want to be a true lawyer and not just a legal luminary.”

Fast forward, two years after that interview, I am now a third year student. I have learned so many things about the law, which I credit to my wonderful professors.I have found a new career in government service. I love how my superiors, Assistant Secretaries and Undersecretaries, would commend me for entering government service at a very young age. Though I sometimes miss how much I earn back when I was doing corporate, the joy of extending service to the oppressed in preparation for my becoming a “true lawyer” compensates for that.

I still do not know what is in store for me for the remainder of my stay in my beloved Malcolm Hall. But whatever that would be, I’ll welcome it with open arms.

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