Every year, thousands of bright-eyed, unsuspecting seekers of intellectual stimulation and job prospects take the LSAT, compile letters of recommendation, and apply to law school.

Once they arrive, they'll be subjected to torturous classroom interrogations, painful amounts of reading, and maddening social encounters. Before they get that rude awakening, however, they'll revel in the brightness of their future and daydream of the world of possibilities that await them in law school.

These soon-to-be 1Ls are leaving the familiar and going somewhere new. This is no Cheers. Everybody most certainly does not know their names. They'll be making some new friends, finding a new group, and maybe even playing a new role.

After realizing that they're entering a wholly new social system full of people they don't know, a brilliant idea dawns on some of these Zero-Ls: “Hey! I can be somebody new!”

And thus begins a fantastic journey.

Their reasons vary. Some people want to be more spontaneous, more adventurous, or more reliable. Others want to be less of a stick-in-the-mud, more popular, or maybe less of a prude. What ends up happening to these people who try to re-invent themselves in law school?

Some of their goals are uninteresting and thoroughly harmless. Some decide they want to be more spontaneous. Those folks are off to a bad start, of course: planning to be spontaneous works about as well as deciding to stop procrastinating next week, but I digress. Most of these planned changes function a lot more like New Year's resolutions than anything else, and they're generally met with the same results.

The stress of law school tends to encourage one to return to their tried and true methods. We're all

creatures of habit, and nothing will send us running for those habits quite like 40 pounds of textbooks and a crotchety old man screaming bizarre Latin phrases.

Those people are really trying to change themselves. They're trying to be different, to effect some sort of personal change, usually for the better, and the transition to law school just provides the necessary impetus to make the decision. This is boring.

But there's another breed of changer: the one that wants not so much to change who they are, but primarily how they're seen by others.

The guy who's never had much of a way with the ladies.

The girl who has been an unpopular nerd since her first day of kindergarten.