By C. Genevieve Jenkins, W&M Law Class of 2009

One thousand, forty-four miles is a very long way to drive. It becomes longer when you make the trip at once, in two 12-passenger vans packed to the gills, pausing only at the odd service station or Waffle House; longer still when you are on spring break with 19 other people whom you barely know. All of us dreaded the driving, the long shifts spent either at the wheel, or conversing mindlessly to keep the unlucky driver awake. We knew something exciting awaited, but 1,044 miles is a very long way to drive, even for something exciting.

By drive’s end, we were bleary-eyed and aching, yet grateful for the morning sunlight and the knowledge that we had reached New Orleans without incident. We spilled out of the vans still almost strangers. An unspoken appreciation emerged amongst us—a knowledge that every person here had some reason for dedicating the single week of “free time” in law school to something greater than ourselves. As we paired off into roommate couplings, the conversations started in earnest; the excitement suppressed through much of the long car ride at last bubbled over.

Although it had been two and a half years since Hurricane Katrina, most of us had not been to New Orleans since the storm; for several of us, this was our first time in the city. The suddenness of being there, of having a week to explore, to get to know this foreign place, was exhilarating. Each of us felt it, rippling through the air, coursing through our veins, as we stood in the courtyard of the brightly painted bed and breakfast. What we hadn’t realized, fully, in that moment, was the equally great excitement of getting to know one another throughout the week.

It happened slowly, slowly, and then all at once. We found ourselves, almost strangers, walking the streets of New Orleans, witnessing both the vibrancy of the city and the tragedy that still hummed through many neighborhoods, visible in the high-water marks nature had scribbled into paint and wood. It was too emotive an experience for us to remain strangers, and each of us caved willingly to it.

On the first night, we wandered Bourbon Street, where we eagerly eyed the varied crowd of old couples, children and parents, hookers with their chests bejeweled, high school brass bands, college spring-breakers. Days and nights later, we shared excitement and laughter and frustration and more laughter. During runs through the Garden District, over Miss Annie’s hot breakfasts, over crawfish and Ibita (the local brew), during morning walks to work, through thunderstorms, while singing on rooftops, over daiquiris, during dance sessions to bad jukebox songs, we shared stories and became stories. We left New Orleans for the 1,044-mile drive home to Williamsburg, no longer strangers, and carrying more memories than with which we had come. We were happily burdened with the knowledge of one another, with the experience of a place, and with stories that will long survive.

We had used each other as landmarks in this strange place, taken comfort in the familiarity of faces long seen in Williamsburg, but not yet known. The biggest problem of law school, so many of us know, is that personalities are effaced in the library, the classrooms. We each become more studious, more grounded, more guarded versions of ourselves while we walk the grounds of Marshall-Wythe. Each of us knows it, and yet rarely do we have the opportunity to walk outside those bounds, except with those few people we have gotten to know despite this obstacle.

For me, the best possible outcome of the SHN trip was one I had least expected: true knowledge of 19 of my fellow law students. And in this knowledge, I realized why and how communities like New Orleans will always survive hurricanes, why humanity will always persist. Getting beyond the stranger is something that takes a jolt, but once it happens, there is no going back, and their laughter becomes your laughter.