Mason Pazhwak '23
Mason, where are you from?
I’m from Fairfax, Virginia, so not far away, just two hours north of here.
How are you enjoying 3LOL so far? How many LOLs would you give it on a scale of one to five?
I’ll give it three LOLs. I’d say it’s not as relaxing as everybody promised it would be, but it is good to be in the last semester.
As you think back, now in your final semester, how would you describe the general trajectory of your law school experience?
We started 1L mostly behind our computers, not in class much, six feet apart—it almost seems like another age. Now we’re around the Law School, maskless, able to go to events. Everything feels way more normal. So that’s one of the great trajectories of law school. We started out in one of the hardest times, and now we’re ending on a good note, which is really nice. I’m glad we got one completely normal year in Charlottesville.
As a 1L, what made you want to start coming to Law Weekly meetings?
I wasn’t involved in my undergrad newspaper at all, but there wasn’t much going on at the Law School, due to the pandemic. I just got in on an interest meeting, and I thought it was a fun group of witty, interesting people. I was like, “Oh, you know, it might be fun to have some way of writing about what’s going on here—some way to occupy the time that I felt like I had too much of—so I might as well give it a chance and write something more creative, as opposed to just doing schoolwork all the time.”
So, talking about the Law Weekly, I noticed that your role is listed as the “Hand of the EIC.” You wanna explain what that means?
I honestly don’t know how that happened. I’ve been the Current Events Editor for the last two years. This year, I was going to be studying abroad, so I was supposed to be the Foreign Correspondent Editor. But I decided to back out of that program, and it’s kind of hard to be a foreign correspondent if you’re in Charlottesville. I thought I’d revert back to Events Editor, but I tend to stay at the meetings longer and hang out with the Executive Board, so I feel like they wanted to give me a role that reflected the fact that I was around doing odd jobs for them. That, along with the current popularity of Game of Thrones, probably explains the title. It was just thrown in there one day, I think by Sai Kulkarni ’23.
As a 3L looking back from your final semester, what’s your favorite memory since you started law school?
That’s a good question. I still think it’s super cool that I got to do my 1L internship in Alaska, at the State Attorney General’s Office. Alaska has always had a mythic quality in my mind. It’s far north, there are tons of mountains, glaciers, bears, moose, and all that. The fact that I got to spend a whole summer there and have a phenomenal time with the other interns was one of the highlights of law school, and I would definitely encourage people who have flexibility with their 1L experience to pick something that they wouldn’t normally do. I think Alaska was an awesome place to live. Of course, I saw it in the summer, when it’s a gorgeous kind of wonderland—I know how it is in the winter. But I’m so glad I had that experience.
Were there any practical aspects of life that were different in Alaska?
The long days just completely change how you feel about a lot of things. Me and the other interns, we would wake up, go to work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the office. And then we could leave the office by 5 p.m., change our clothes, start hiking at 6 p.m., and hike until 11 p.m., all with the sun still out. And there’s this massive mountain range right up against Anchorage. You could drive to it in fifteen, twenty minutes and find yourself at a glacier peak within a couple of hours, so it was really cool. They always call the rest of the contiguous United States the lower forty-eight, and that kinda describes how it’s a different world up there.
Let’s do a lightning round!
Favorite place to eat in Charlottesville?
Lampo Neapolitan Pizzeria.
Favorite snack?
I think Flaming Hot Cheetos are my favorites.
Favorite color?
I gotta stick with blue. I think blue is what I said back in kindergarten, so I’m gonna stick with that.
Class you’d recommend to everyone?
International Law and the Use of Force with Professor Deeks.
Favorite breakfast food?
It’s gotta be an omelet. It always hits good.
Favorite villain?
I guess he’s an antihero, but probably Tony Soprano.
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Interviewed by Jacob Smith '23
amb6ag@virginia.edu