Monica Sandu '24
Co-Executive Editor
Every year, Valentine’s Day catches me off guard. Given retail’s obsession with selling holiday products as early as humanly possible, I’ve been inundated with chocolate hearts and giant teddy bears that say “hug me” on them since December 26, when stores take down all the Christmas gear they’d been offering since August. And then, all of a sudden, it arrived, and I had to confront the fact that I would be spending yet another Valentine’s on my own. Nevertheless, I was looking for a place to socialize and partake in the season’s festivities. As a huge chocoholic whose favorite color happens to be pink, I wanted to be swept away by hopeless romantic wonder. Discount candy and Netflix rom coms just wouldn’t do. Luckily, the Law School’s beloved Feb Club had my back.
Billed as a single’s night, LPS’s Love Island party,[1] hosted on Valentine’s Day, gave me high hopes for a fun and romantic night. Imagine my surprise when I showed up to the Rugby Road address in full themed wear only to discover that the house was, in fact, on Rugby Avenue, and I had just been parked by some random person’s driveway for several minutes, waiting for something to happen. Perhaps the fact that all of the lights were turned off should have been a sign that this was not the house I was looking for. Relief washed over me when I finally made it to the party a full fifteen minutes after it was supposed to start. Imagine my shame—as we all know, nobody ever shows up late to Feb Club parties.
One great thing about law school is that you learn so many new things. That evening, for example, I learned what the game “King’s Cup” was. Given that I was only drinking water,[2] however, I began aiming for cards that would let me drink, since I was—and eternally remain—quite dehydrated. After that, we tried to do a tame, Tuesday-night version of the Love Island game where people write down their secrets and then the group has to try and match the secret to the person. The fun of this activity was dampened by the fact that I had no clue who most of the people at the party were. Still, there were shocking revelations made that night, potentially endangering one’s ability to pass the Character and Fitness portion of the Bar, like the fact that apparently somebody at the Law School makes cookies with premade dough but still calls them homemade. Once I decided to head out, I drove to Kroger in my red dress and heels and bought myself discount chocolate and stuffed animals to my heart’s content before the store inevitably cleared out the shelves by the next day.
While weeknight events are all good and fine, the real fun starts on the weekends. While I was feeling so clever for coming up with the title of this article, it turns out that the name was already claimed by Virginia Law Women’s Friday-night party, “Virginia (Law Women) is for Lovers.” The theme was pink, glitter, hearts, and anything else cheesy and Valentine’s-themed that your heart could ever desire, paired, of course, with everyone’s favorite beer pong and dance tunes. It was as people kept pouring in and the dance floor got increasingly more crowded that I realized something about myself—I am really bad at mingling.
Whenever I’m at a party, I have a hard time talking to people I don’t know because I always feel like I’m intruding on their existing conversation and don’t have a reason to insert myself into their circle besides just wanting to be social. I feel like I need a reason to go and introduce myself to somebody new, but that means that parties like this one can often feel as isolating as they are an opportunity for socializing. The advice I got was to just go for it, walk up to a circle, and ask if I could get in on the conversation. This was against everything in my introverted self, so I went with a tried-and-true method instead: sticking close to the people you know and letting them introduce you to new people. As you start to meet more and more people, the connections expand until you’ve been introduced to at least one person in any given circle of people. My night of dancing and new friendships ended with me finding my one true love—a beautiful milkshake from Cook Out.
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ms7mn@virginia.edu