As I’ve grown older, I have strangely, but I guess expectedly, started to love getting massages and going to jjim jil bang (korean bathhouses) – activities I loathed even a few years ago. Maybe its the inner ajummah coming out, but the first thing I wanted to do after taking my last final was get a massage.

This past week, I went to the jjim jil bang with my mom and my grandma.  I was pretty excited to go, but to my dismay, my mom signed me up for the bath scrub, something that even I (as a newfound massage enthusiast) was a bit wary of.  Basically, its an hr-long ordeal where an older 60ish y.o. lady lays you out butt-naked on a table and scrubs every unpioneered inch of your body.  Most women have had their private bits poked/prodded in weird ways whether its to get that bikini wax or visiting the gyno, but this takes it to a whole other level of vulnerability.

When I first entered the backside of the spa (where these scrubs were taking place), I felt like I was entering a Hostile-esque horror movie where all the women were separated into rooms and were tortured (again, my wild imagination getting the best of me).  There was something eerie about it as I passed by exposed rooms of naked women on their respective cots and heard hot water angrily splashing about.

As I settled down, my masseuse knew I was pretty nervous and she told me to just relax.  And then the scrubbing commenced.  It kind of hurt at first, but then as I did start to relax, it felt oddly refreshing.  All the grit and grime just being unapologetically scoured off of me, with no mercy.   When I was done with the session, my skin felt flushed, but renewed.   It felt like an entire layer was peeled off of me, and here I was – raw and bare.

A perfect way to top off the year, no?  All the burdens, concerns, heartache, disappointments, and sorrow just scrub-a-dub-dubbed away.  Off with the old, on with the new.

I hate plane rides.  I always get freaked out before each takeoff and once we hit some mild turbulence, I can’t help but imagine wild scenarios in my head of going down (I blame Final Destination for that).  But the only thing I like about plane rides is that I sometimes discover some good shows/movies/etc. while I’m on the flight.  For instance, I started watching “Community” (a show that I gave up on after the pilot episode), because I saw one of their random episodes from the later seasons, when the show actually became really good and thematic (I believe it was the “Dinner with Andre”-inspired episode).

Yesterday, I ended up watching the rest of “Southside with You” – the movie about Barack & Michelle Obama’s first date.  Huge coincidence that they were playing it, because its such a small-scale movie and I actually purchased it on Amazon the night before but my computer kept crashing on me so I couldn’t finish it.  What are the chances?  There’s a part in the movie where Barack is asking Michelle about her true passions and suggesting that her heart isn’t into the corporate law firm life (It’s interesting to hear as someone who is constantly being lured into the “dark side”).

After the movie, I was channel surfing until I stumbled upon ESPN’s 30 for 30 marathon.  I first saw “Survive and Advance,” a documentary about NC State’s cinderella/underdog story about winning the NCAA championship in 1983.  The story centered around the coach, Jim Valvano, who changed the player’s lives.  As a woman who’s pretty unathletic, I think that’s one bond that I will never get to experience but I’ll treasure from afar: the coach-player relationship.  It was so touching to see these grown men being moved to tears as they talked about their coach, who ended up eventually passing away from cancer.

Coach Valvano’s speech at the ESPYs:

Then, right after I watched “Phi Slama Jama,” a documentary of the opposing team (Univ of Houston) and their downfall.  They were the most hyped/favored team who advanced to the final four for three straight years (1982-1984), but never won.  It was interesting to see the documentaries back-to-back, you rarely get to see such a full-fledged depiction of the winners and the losers. The directors were planning on giving a more general overview of the three seasons of near victories, but the documentary evolved into a search for one troublesome, but talented player who disappeared from the scene after their final loss. One pass, one steal, one shot could potentially change a player’s path forever.  But that’s life.

I’m embarrassed to say that I neglected writing in here for the whole first semester, but that’s just an indication of how rough 1L first semester really was.  That’s a lie; I did have time to write in it (especially in the beginning/middle of the semester), but I couldn’t figure out how to log back into the account.

So how was my first semester in law school?

It’s hard to say… when people were trying to prepare/dissuade me from going back to school, they all warned me about how painful that infamous 1L year was. So I did expect the absolute worst.  When I was in the thick of reading/finals period, the struggle felt excruciatingly accurate, but now (not even two days past my last final), it didn’t seem all that bad (but then again, I tend to be really good at blocking out/forgetting painful moments).

To be completely honest, these past six months have been one of the most difficult life chapters(?) I’ve experienced, not solely because of school but a slew of personal issues. Maybe if other areas of my life weren’t hurting, school itself wouldn’t have been too bad. But I’m one of those unfortunate people where compartmentalizing doesn’t work too well, and when one (especially relational) area of my life is affected, it just tends to spread and leak into other areas as well.  Not to be melodramatic, but there were periods of this past semester where I really did feel I was at the lowest of lows, and though I live in a familiar city with a pretty large circle of friends, I felt incredibly alone and isolated.

There were so many moments where I started second-guessing my decision to go back to school, especially when I thought about how relatively cushy and laid-back my life was back when I was working @BuzzFeed.  While in school, my body/brain felt exhausted all the time.  There were days when I would be in bed from 9pm-9am, and this is coming from someone who used to average 5 hours a sleep per night.  In my downtime, I would look at instagram/snapchat/facebook and envy pretty much everyone else’s seemingly carefree and lavish lives.  I even started growing incredibly envious of the lives of my friend’s babies (not a worry in the world…).

So I had to keep drilling in my mind how lucky I was to be here… to be gaining valuable knowledge from renowned professors in the midst of bright, gifted peers.  I feel that I really lucked out this semester with the professors that I had; my Criminal Law professor, who seemed quite intimidating at first, is extremely passionate and somehow manages to balance a powerful, yet also approachable presence. Our Civil Procedure professor is a quirky, little lady (who seriously seems like she can teach at Hogwarts) and actually performed some type of wizardry magic to bring life into the dryest material.

Every professor gave us an inspirational pep talk on the last day of class, telling us what a great profession this is, not to be discouraged by the current political climate, and how each of us have bright futures and a great responsibility ahead of us.

That’s what it is. Need to think big picture. This year is just a hazing period, and all I have to do is survive.  Perseverance!

But for the next three weeks, I’m ready to be come a semi-vegetative blob. Off to La-La-Land!