Orientation week was a blur.
It was a fun, engaging, and absolutely jam-packed blur. For nearly a week, we were kept busy with a mix of welcome lectures, advice-laden sessions, and team-building icebreakers.
At times, we’d find ourselves squared off in a cheering competition; at other times, we were given riveting lectures on the law by Profs Nikos Harris and David Duff. Some sessions missed their mark (at times, there was just too much advice) but many others hit the bullseye (the closing banquet and the following social night at Mahoney’s topped my list).
Perhaps most importantly, we got to meet our “small groups,” the 20-25 students we’ll take each and every class with this year. Out of the 184 students entering this fall (more than 2,000 applied, we were told), these are the two dozen students we’ll be getting to know the best.
It’s a humbling experience, getting to know talented students who attend law school. We have fine arts majors and finance students, yoga teachers and former government employees, as well as a predictably healthy share of political science and philosophy students.
Just as I’d hoped, every one of them was very intelligent, interesting, and had their own spark of something special. And also as I’d hoped, it certainly seems that we all share the desire for our UBC law experience to be a collaborative environment (as opposed to an uber-competitive, dog-eat-dog environment you can find at some schools). So far, so good!