Final Thoughts

Do you know the feeling, when something you have enjoyed is coming to an end? You thought about it since three years, you planned it since one and a half years, you lived it for (only) nine month, you enjoyed each and every second of fun, stress, Columbia life, New York life, new friendship, academic challenge – just every second. And now it is about to happen: you are saying farewell to your fellow classmates, your professors, your flatmates, your new friends from all over the world. You are saying goodbye to what you could call home throughout the last year. You are traveling to the airport. You are passing the security check. You are sitting in the plane. You are becoming excited and melancholic at the same time. You are realizing: “home home” – it is really happening. Somehow this feeling seems familiar – didn’t you feel somewhat the same the day you arrived?

The LLM experience is what everybody tells you when trying to convince you why you should take up the challenge of doing a LLM. One may argue if it really is the best year of your life. How do you define “best”? But, it definitely is a year of your life, which will leave a big and heavy footprint on the storyboard of your life. It will provide you with innumerable stimuli, academically and personally.

You might not realize during the year, as you are struggling with all these tiring papers and essays and readings, but if you decide not to make an “ERASMUS-LLM” and take the LLM more or less not only as an opportunity to pay 68.000 dollar tuition for a year of partying in New York, you can improve your (legal and professional) skills substantially. Columbia Law School and the entire environment you will be in will challenge you. Columbia Law School will improve you. Columbia Law School is definitely more than just a big name, you will be entitled to put after your name. You will realize during the year, the LLM year will make you think about your life, your plans, yourself. For most of us, it is a period in life, which requires decisions, be it jobs, where to live, how to live, whatever. The LLM year, where you are immersed into work, challenges, and where you receive thousand incentives and opportunities every day, makes you to question your habits and your views on and approaches to life. The LLM will contribute to getting to know yourself.  And last (for here), but certainly not least, at some point you will realize that you have a new home not only in New York, but all over the world, be it Sweden, Mexico or Panama – a new home where a good friend will welcome you.

Of course, all this also depends on your commitment and your choice and you, yourself. There are different ways of doing an LLM. For sure, all this is not true for everyone in my class. You do not have to study. You do not have to party. You do not have to leave Columbia’s wonderful campus for month, if you don’t want to. But, somehow, there is this spirit, this vibe in New York. People here all are somewhat crazy. People go beyond there boundaries. Why not go run at 5:30 in Central Park? Have you ever thought about this possibility before? No? Well, me neither. But in New York, it somehow happened. In New York, there is no maybe. New York is “do it”. “Try it”. “Try everything”. If you allow it, if you offer a tiny inflammable piece of yourself, New York will spark fire in you. And this is particularly true in an environment like Columbia Law School.

Now the time will start where everyone will ask: “how was it? Tell me about your LLM, your year in New York!” In a nutshell: it was intense in all respects – an intense experience making me learn a lot. While the learning experience and the intensity may vary from person to person, talking to my fellow classmates and friends, I have the sense that we all share this basic feeling.

With these thoughts, I want to thank you all for following my journey in the US, and encourage you all to make a LLM experience yourself – it need not be Columbia, it need not be New York. But for sure, where-ever and how-ever you decide to take on this challenge, it will enrich you. It will be worth it! Do it!

Graduation

How many photos did members of Columbia Law School take on the day of graduation? How often were graduates hugged on the day of graduation? How many hands were shaken? How many students could celebrate their graduation? How many liters of sweat were lost during the ceremony? How often was the word “congratulations” said? How often was it asked “so what are your future plans”? How many prices and awards were presented? How many photos of graduation were uploaded on Facebook? How often were they liked? How often was the responsibility mentioned that we as lawyers have society? How often were the graduates tasked with the easy mission of establishing justice and protecting the rule of law? To how many kilometers would all smiles add up together?

From day one, law school graduation is advertised as THE event of the LLM experience. And indeed, the graduation ceremony is a more than worthy and adequate conclusion of this intense and wonderful year at Columbia Law School. It was a cheerful, festive mood, yet also a final reminder of the responsibility a Columbia degree brings with it.

Of course, everything started with waiting (maybe to remind us of how everything started: we waited for the admission decision, the LLM to finally start, etc): for what felt like eternity, all graduates had to stand lined up alphabetically in gowns and hats.

And of course, when we finally marched in, Elgar’s march was the piece of music that was played. Again, equality for everybody was guaranteed – meaning that Elgar’s march was repeated until the last graduate was seated. The ceremony started off with numerous speeches: the dean, student speakers, elected by the JD class and the LLM class, Professor Tally, who was awarded the teaching prize, and finally the key note speaker, Mary Jo White, the former chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All speeches presented the spirit of the law school: all were thoughtful and thought-provoking. All were presented eloquently and in an entertaining manner, with passion and vigor, with wit, yet always with a grain of seriousness and awareness of responsibility. Again, prizes were awarded – not without great surprise for some graduates, who did not know about their honors. And finally, the climax: perfectly organized, the handshake-marathon: every graduate was presented (Sylvia Polo presented all LLMs with a perfect pronunciation of our names!), and had the honor to shake the dean’s and Mary Jo White’s hands. Of course, pictures were taken – and of course, to buy those, you had to pay almost as much as your tuition. The last act, was mingling around: one last time, free food with wonderful New York Jazz. The Law School’s invited all graduates and guests to a wonderful reception.

The LLM program itself is over now. But it will always live on in everybody of us for sure. This is exactly the message the Law School graduation ceremony conveyed.

P.S. Some answers to the questions posed above may be found on the graduation website: http://www.law.columbia.edu/graduation/2017. But for most of them, it is like always: experience it yourself!

Commencement Day

At first it was confusing. How many graduation ceremonies are there? One or two? Is it the 17^th or the 18^th of May? When do we graduate? Those questions accompanied lots of us from the day we were accepted to Columbia Law School.

But the closer we came to the great week of graduation, the clearer it became: There are two (2!!) graduation ceremonies. One law school graduation, and one university graduation. On the 17^th and the 18^th. But only the fact that we wore our wonderful baby-blue non-breathable gowns and black hats, was the same. The ceremonies themselves are completely different.

Last Wednesday, the university commencement took place. It is a very traditional ceremony, in which all (!) graduates of the entire Columbia University participate. Each school and college being part of Columbia University sent their graduates, and the respective dean requested the university’s president to confer the students their degrees. The entire campus is filled with graduates and spectators. Throughout the festive entrance procedure, everybody is allowed to march in listening to a wonderful march of Elgar, performed by wonderful loudspeakers. The university ensures equality to everybody here – even if this means that the piece is repeated 50 times. As soon as all deans, honorands and award winners are present as well, the commencement, guided by the university provost, starts. The President of the University (do never believe all those rumors Obama is about to come; those rumors are spread way to often throughout the year) addresses the graduates in a final speech, not only complimenting them for their achievements, but also forcefully reminding them of their responsibly of being a Columbia graduate, especially in present times. And then, the lengthy, but still interesting part of the ceremony (to the extent that you learn not only which other schools exist, but also what they do) begins: honors are distributed; each dean describes in a more or less entertaining manner the graduates’ achievements and learning success, and asks the president to grant degrees to the graduates. Finally, the president accepts those requests. Again, I do not want to reveal too many details - just experience it yourself. (For all who want more details check out the University Website; as there was even a live-stream for those who could not attend, you can see the entire ceremony online) It suffices to state: officially, we are graduates now! So, let the party begin – and so did it. As soon as the final word was spoken, the university played almost all songs about New York, and thus transformed the entire campus to a huge dance floor. Happy faces everywhere - Columbia University, it has been a pleasure.

Grad Ball

It was advertised as the last big gala of our law school careers. And indeed, it was big. It was huge. It was tremendous. In the gorgeous Capitale, we had exactly three hours and twenty minutes (Americans are really strict on when to end a party) to officially celebrate ourselves, our time in New York, our successful study at Columbia, our new friendships and everything else one more time! When you saw stunning evening dresses, elegant smokings, skillful hairstyles, and surprisingly many more or less artistic bound bow ties, you started to realize that these amazing, inspiring, awesome nine month really come to an end. Delicious food (Where was the strongly advertised dessert??), open bar fulfilling almost all wishes, an impressive hall – the setting was perfect to start saying farewell! American-style (very) loud and diverse music (even during dinner) made also sure that talking remained an attempt, or at least that no one could understand what the conversational partner was trying to articulate (it was probably about the plans what will happen next (which meant that the year is over now) – so “Oh so interesting” and “time flies” was anyways always the right answer, no one could hear) – party, party joyful was the main motive of the evening. I think no further comment is necessary here... Let's sum it up like this: A great night for a sad reason - but if you say good bye like this, it makes it easier.

Supreme Court Justice Visits

If you will study at Columbia Law School, you cannot but notice that the law school’s entire pride is notorious R.B.G: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Her portrait hangs prominently in the lobby; it seems that every professor has the obligation to mention her at least once in class. And almost for sure, there will be an occasion to listen to her sharing her wisdom on constitutional matters.

Unfortunately, I did not have the chance to meet R.B.G. I was too slow to sign up in time to receive one of the tickets, the Law School distributed this semester. All the more, I was lucky to have the unique chance to attend a visit of Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. On the occasion of the conferral of the Annual Wolfgang Friedmann Award, Justice Breyer visited the Law School for almost two days, and presented his views on the relationship between constitutional law and international law. I attended the Annual Wolfgang Friedmann Memorial Banquet in the chic Club ‘21’, organized by the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. It was a great opportunity to mingle and if you were brave enough even to intimately chat with the very friendly, smart, lively and eloquent Justice Breyer. The food was “American delicious” – you will soon discover what this means (…the desert was sweet but great…). Interesting talks with partners of law firms and your fellow classmates and not at least the emotional and inspiring address by Justice Breyer made this an experience I will definitely not forget – even though it took place already a month ago, and exams hindered me from reporting earlier.