I'll tell you right up front that Joe Werner strikes me as a pretty cool guy. He's 22, dark-haired and good-looking, with an easy smile, just the right amount of unshaven face and a vibe that suggests he doesn't think he knows everything.
I feel better about the future when meeting 20-somethings like him.
But I was more curious about the other side of the street.
About whether he was, perhaps for the first time, wondering what the heck he'd gotten himself into. Whether, perhaps, he didn't know which end was up these days. Falling apart? Overwhelmed?
Werner is a first-year student at Chapman University School of Law, two weeks into the semester. Maybe it's my sadistic side, but I wanted to know how a freshman feels now that the perception of law school is a reality.
"It's definitely given me, even in the first two weeks, a very realistic impression of myself," he says. "It's a humbling thing to sit there in class and the professor asks you a question and you're unsure of the answer, then he takes the attention off of you and you're wiping your forehead and he asks someone else and they give this brilliant answer and you're thinking, 'Oh, man.' "
He's saying this not while twisting a tissue in his hands and gently weeping. He's sort of smiling.
His angst-tinged humor makes me laugh, and I ask why he can't just trust the intellect that produced a 4.2 grade-point average at Newbury Park High School in Ventura County and a 3.3 as an undergrad at Chapman.
"It's humbling in terms of intellect," he says. "I'm really shifting my trust from my intellect to my work ethic. I'm definitely just hoping to work harder than anybody else, I guess."
Every incoming freshman knows the first semester is a bear. And that the second semester, when your class load expands from five to six, will be tougher than the first.
"A few of us were hanging out last night," Werner says, "and somebody said it's a sense of going up on a roller coaster and it starts clicking up the track and you know something's going to happen but you're not sure yet. We all know it's going to get crazy and things are going to happen and we're going to have obstacles we didn't see coming."
After college graduation, Werner spent a year working at an Irvine law firm. This is his first time in a classroom in more than a year and he's still searching for his groove, especially since high school and college came relatively easy for him.
