A call for madder music and for stronger wine

My Fed Courts professor just advised us that our homework for today is to decide what we will do to commemorate and celebrate our last day of law school. It's too bad that the end of law school (which for many of us will be the end of our protracted educations) is so anticlimatic. Graduation is weeks after exams and in the middle of the week, so far fewer students and families attend than otherwise might; most students end not with a bang but a whimper, thanks to the general perception of the third year of law school as pointless and the draining effect of the 3L paper requirement.

My undergraduate college handed out free bottles of champagne to graduating seniors on the day they turned in their required theses. People brought them to class, laid on the grass and toasted themselves, and generally pervaded the school with a joyous atmosphere. The last two years have not indicated that law students are similarly willing to celebrate the end of their long march. Are we too jaded? So turned off by the law school experience that we refuse to reflect on it long enough to recognize the magnitude of our achievement?

I would feel a lot better about Harvard if there were more spontaneous public drunkenness at this time of year. It would at least indicate that HLS hasn't sucked out all our essential humanity.

(The general sense of law school discontent in this post was partially inspired by Energy Spatula.)