Track and Field Day at Osgoode Hall

This week reminded me of elementary school during track and field finals, when the athletes among my classmates went to another regional school to compete for ribbons. The rest of us (the majority, it turns out, but it didn't seem so at the time) stayed behind for Fun Day, or Play Day, or some bullshit thing. The grade eights would run three-legged-races and limbo contests and egg-related feats of agility. It wasn't fun, partially because the games were invented and administered by thirteen-year-olds, but principally because everyone there knew they were there because they had failed to demonstrate any strength, speed or agility and because the faculty felt they couldn't make some of the kids work while the rest were off jumping over bars and sand pits.

My classes were half empty yesterday. Many of my Osgoode peers are taking part in On-Campus Interviews, which will determine whether they obtain coveted jobs in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver or (dare to hope!) New York in summer 2009. Everybody is dolled up and stressed out, and nobody is in class because at this point their futures are all but assured and they needn't trouble themselves with such minutiae.

Meanwhile, back at Fun Day, it's business as usual, only more excruciating than normal because the students who normally monopolize the discourse are all at OCIs. Those Left Behind put on a brave face, talking about how they chose not to participate in the whole stressful rigmarole (and maybe some of them really did, choose), joking about their bad marks, pretending their futures are truly in doubt, flat out lying that they already have a job locked up back at the Public Prosecutions office where they worked last summer. That last one is me.

At least profs continue to lecture, rather than slap us in the face. If I go to school on Monday and I am asked to negotiate an obstacle course while balancing an egg on a spoon in my mouth, I will do what I should have done in grade eight: drop out.