As the incoming 1L class gets ready to attend law school, since people seem mystified by my tales of law school, let me relate the experience as only I can, through profanity and excess, without much hyperbole and exaggeration.

I went to UT for undergrad, because I am that cool. I also wanted to go to UT for law school, because that sounded rad, but a 168 LSAT and a 3.8 GPA from UT undergrad do not a happy law school admissions counselor make. I was, flatly, rejected.

Rather than sue the law school for not letting my average, white, upper-middle-class ass into school, I resolved to apply elsewhere. Some schools offered me scholarships (Syracuse) and some waitlisted me (Wake Forest, Colorado). I considered all of these.

But my legal mentor, a man I'd known since I was an infant, was a Baylor grad. His sister (my current office mate) is a Baylor Law grad. Their oldest brother, my sometimes co-counsel, is a Baylor Law grad. Three lawyers I deeply respected, all linked by Baylor.

I thought, at the time, I wanted to stay in Texas. It's where my family was. It's where my wife's family was. I wanted my wife (then my girlfriend) to stay with me through law school. So we picked a Texas school (FOOLISH). It was Tech or Baylor.

Tech offered a scholarship, but Baylor was higher ranked, so I made the decision to pursue Baylor because of the ranking. I had never toured the school. I had never spoken to anyone but my mentors about it. I knew it was tough and litigation-focused, but I wanted to litigate.

So I accepted admission. I had a choice to start in the fall of 2005 or the spring of 2006. I chose Spring 06 to give myself a summer and a fall after graduating undergrad to work. I also thought spring starters would have lower average grades and it'd be easier to stand out.

One sunny January morning in 2006, I showed up for orientation. My entering class was just over 50 students. I was, as in most things, completely average. Average in achievement. Average in intelligence. Average in drive. So the question became -- how to distinguish the average?

The answer that Baylor provides is to throw yourself into misery with greater gusto than your compatriots. In the initial class, we were set in alpha order. That's how I, Mr. Haygood, met Mr. George. We paired up on day 1 as partners, which would last for 3 years… and beyond.

Rob is still co-counsel with me on cases to this date. Without him, I would NEVER have survived what was coming, which again, I still had no true idea of. Everyone's 1L year is hard as you begin to learn to think like a lawyer, to read cases, and take notes.

But I was already behind the curve. See, I was a Plan I Honors student at UT, meaning I was extraordinarily fortunate not to have to take a lot of gen ed courses. Apart from three science units, I did not have to take a history, math, or other class outside my major, philosophy.

Philosophy is tremendously easy to study for. You do the reading and take notes. Then you show up to lecture and discussion sessions and listen/talk about what you read. Then you read again with the benefit of the lecture, and take more notes. Bada bing, easy.

Obviously this method does not work for law school, which requires closer reading, organization of what you learned into an outline, and so forth. I had never been forced to develop those kinds of study habits. Being a 1L is a crash course in how to study.

So at the same time as I'm wrestling with concepts like subject-matter jurisdiction, I was also having to break myself of the bad study habits I'd learned taking a major well-suited to my intellectual strengths to one not-as-suited.

Again, my study group saved my life, by helping me identify those deficiencies and correct them in such a way that I made Bs in contracts and property and As in legal writing and civ pro. OK, I thought, I can handle this.

Baylor is on a quarter system. 45 class days and a final for most classes. That means 45 class days and a single large exam are 100% of your grade. Finals time became a recurring nightmare of crunch study on a rigid schedule dawn to midnight followed by a grueling exam.

Within this time, there was precious little time for breaks to do things like go to a movie theater or even sit on the couch with my wife and watch TV. My life became defined by the class - study - sleep schedule.

So for all 27 months I spent in school in Waco, I essentially devoted every waking minute of my life that wasn't spent eating, shitting, or driving to the study of law, in a hypercompetitive environment, where failure was not something I could countenance.

In the end, all my struggling was limited by my own natural limits in intellect and ability; I graduated just outside the top 10% of my class with my most major achievements being in moot court.

But I had also developed close relationships with several professors who inspired me and pushed me beyond my limits, like @oslerguy and @RoryRyan, which helped rescue me from my self-imposed isolation and depression during law school.

Every one of my personal relationships suffered. I lost friends. I nearly lost my wife. I strained ties with family. My months at Baylor were not kind to me. It took six months of therapy once I graduated to readjust to "life outside," as I came to think of it.

I bore *scars*. I habitually mistrusted everyone I met. I sought to injure and demean others I believed in competition with me (whether real or imaginary). I believed only by being cutthroat and ruthless could I "succeed."

It made me angry. It made me distrustful. It got to the point where I begged my wife to shoot me to end the (entirely self-imposed) misery I felt at graduating during an economic crisis and not having a job. In many ways, Baylor BROKE me.

At the same time, it gave me the tools necessary to be an excellent attorney. Even as a fresh graduate, I had skills other attorneys can take years to develop -- cross-examination, jury selection, etc. -- which was a benefit to me.

Eventually, it did help me find a job, a job I was able to parlay into a better job with Montgomery County, and finally into my own (successful) practice. But it wasn't an easy road to get here.

I have a very love/hate relationship with Baylor Law. I love the end result; but I hated the road to get there, a road unnecessarily divisive, competitive, and that taught me a lot of (wrong) personal lessons in addition to the (right) legal ones.

Were it not for the good professors I mentioned who taught me to remain human in addition to becoming a robotic, cold-hearted monster of an advocate, I shudder to think what my life might be these days.

And I will always carry that with me, which is why I am thrilled when I work with other Baylor lawyers. There's a sense of shared suffering, of having overcome a constructed nightmare, together.