#i gotta study for my mock law trial though.. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

astridthevalkyrie · 6 months

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If it’s not too much, can u pls tell me how does it feel like to be a law student? Having a rough time picking majors for next year ;-;

Thank you!

not too much at all! obviously my word is not the end all be all but i can tell you what my experience has been so far.

law school is hard, but it also isn't. it's a crapton of reading, first off. one class could give you fifty pages of reading that need to be read by the next day. professors will post a syllabus/schedule so you can try and read ahead and you might for a while, but it's impossible to be on top of everything all the time. i've already seen breakdowns and had breakdowns, and i've been in law school for all of (checks watch) two and a half months. since classes grade pretty much only on final exams and maybe midterms, anyone like me who relied on always getting their homework done on time and participation to keep their grades up will be miserable.

you need to carve out time. a lot of time. you may think it'll take you two hours to do one reading—it'll take four hours at least. but if you give yourself that time, for reading, for studying, for practice questions, you'll stay above the surface. your social life is gonna die a little. not as terribly as i imagine med students' lives do, but you can't see your friends every week. you can't spend time with your family every week. you can't indulge in your hobbies every week.

extracurriculars are....also not the same as undergrad. there's no joining theatre club or creative writing or anime club as a way to destress after classes and turn your mind off from your studies. every club is a law society of sorts and they all do pretty much the same thing—if they're a diversity group of some kind, they'll plan things around that identity (i've seen henna+study! and destress+dragbingo! events from the south asian and gay straight alliance law societies respectively). they'll offer outlines from students who have already taken the classes you're taking. they'll give you an idea of how it feels to be an upperclassman and good advice on what to do to survive your first year (and their advice helps a lot more than teachers). mostly every club requires dues. the big clubs are any advocacy progams, like mock trial or moot court, and if you compete in those your life will get harder because you do have to put in the work to succeed in those competitions.

i have terrible adhd, executive dysfunction, procrastination problems, focusing issues, whatever you wanna call it. i'm writing this in class right now. i usually can't focus in class and have to do most of my learning outside of it. the reading IS important. what's also important is looking at outlines made by people who took the same class AND had the same teacher. doing practice problems, talking to at least one other classmate to try and understand things (study "groups" are a little overhyped, they're not as deadly necessary as everyone says they are. just have at least one person in every class that you can confer and sit down with sometimes.)

law students are pretentious! unfortunately. i'm not in a super diverse area, so i'm one of four or five south asian girls in my section of `70 people. many people talk like they are god's gift to the world. and many people don't and are completely chill. everyone is struggling, though. everyone has a weak spot and everyone seems to some extent have imposter syndrome. if you do get into law school, you gotta remember you got in. on your own merits. no one is smarter or dumber than you, just different.

classes themselves are interesting. your first year your classes are decided for you so you can take all the basic classes you need to study more advanced stuff. and things will surprise you. i thought civil procedure just by its name sounded incredibly boring. but it's not! i wouldn't pursue a career in it, but seeing cases succeed or fail based on technicalities and guidelines is fasinating to me. your legal writing class will make you do research on things you don't know about, and suddenly you're kind of an authority on them! (don't debate a lawyer, but, y'know, throw some big words around your friends and family.)

it feels so good when things click. when you've studied for two hours and suddenly you figure this shit out, it's like a whole new world just opened up for you. it's incredibly satisfying to answer questions correctly. don't worry about memorization as much as you should worry about understanding, exams can be open book and if they're not professors will know they're not and will not make them rely just on your memory.

SO. all in all. law school is tough, much tougher than undergrad, everyone around you knows it's tough, and if you think you can do hours of reading at a time, write in a way you've never written before (cite. after. every. assertion.) and isolate yourself away from everything and everyone to focus on your studies, then go for it. don't think it's for super super smart people, it's not. don't think you need to know the law or the constitution or anything to apply, you don't. if you're a fan or argument, or persuasion, or even etymology, you could do really well at law school.

feel free to ask me anything else about it!

#finished this post just in time for class to finish #law school

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canaryatlaw · 7 years

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it’s late...time got away from me a bit. oh well, I don’t have to wake up very early, so that’s good. back on my laptop. I have a genius bar appointment for my phone on thursday because when I went to check the battery life status today it actually told me my battery was probably dying lol so I took that as a pretty good sign I should get a new one. So hopefully that will help. Today was kind of hectic, but still good. I woke up at 10, took a few minutes to get out of bed but I made it, got ready and headed down to school. I got there at like 11:35, our meeting for CFLA was supposed to start at 11:50 (the 1L classes get out at 11:40 so lunchtime meetings are generally 11:50 to 12:50 so they can get to their 1 pm classes on time) and when I arrived all the 1Ls (and some 2Ls I imagine) were there already, and there was a definitive lack of pizza present, which was supposed to be there. so we waited....and waited...and eventually introduced ourselves, then I exited to wait for the pizza guy in front of the building because “he couldn’t find parking) -_____- I ended up being outside for like 10 minutes, and not getting back up till like 12:05, at which point our president had gotten through pretty much all the meeting points, and was just about to let people go when I arrived with the pizza just in the nick of time. so we were somewhat less than enthused about how things turned out but it could’ve been worse. We hung out for a while and talked to people which was cool, then I eventually headed down for my 1 o clock class. There’s a study seminar in the classroom right before our class so we wind up gathering in the hallway outside, and I talked to some people for a while before we got into the room. Bus orgs was fine, not terribly entertaining subject material but our professor is rather entertaining so that helps at least. We’re ahead in our reading, but he’s gonna cancel class on Thursday of next week (he has his daughter’s wedding rehearsal- awww) so that’ll probably get us back on track. Class was over, I headed down to the PAD office where I spent a few minutes reading the case (or one of them at least) we’d discuss on Thursday in bus orgs, then moving on to the adoption law reading. I hadn’t brought my book with me because my backpack is heavy enough already, but I wrote down the case names and citations, so I just looked them up on westlaw and read them there, and that worked fine. Didn’t take very long either. So then I was stuck doing auction calls, which is definitely not my favorite thing, but they gotta get done one way or another, so I did a couple of those and at least made some progress. Two 2L’s that were both on the mock trial team last year were hanging around the office so I spent a while talking to them, and then ordered from my phone and ran over to starbucks and got a cotton candy frap (you can order it directly from the mobile app under the “favorite creations” section, or whatever it’s called). I think I’m getting a bit addicted to starbucks, gotta probably be more careful then that. went to night class, legal profession, which was, predictably, very boring, and I had a hard time paying attention. I figured I’d at least try to be productive during the time at least instead of reading buzzfeed articles the whole time (I still did that, but not the entire time) and looked up some MPRE study materials online. Legal Profession as a class is supposed to prepare you for the MPRE, except it really doesn’t at all, so I thought I’d take the time to actually learn what I’d need to know to pass this test come November. Sooner or later class was over and I headed home. I made some eggs and put them on a roll with some cheese, which was nice, then watched an episode of Smallville, featuring Maxima, who I remember was one superman the animated series, so that was amusing. And yeah, then I just got caught up in a million little things getting ready for bed and time got away from me and here we are. oh well. I don’t have to wake up until 10:45 tomorrow, so that’s good at least. I should probably go to sleep now though and not make it any worse. Goodnight dolls. Have a smashing Wednesday.

#daily journal #September 2017

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