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Sunday, December 23, 2007

congratulations.

congratulations.

by now, you all should be done with your finals. to all you 1Ls...congratulations on making it through one of the most foreign, stressful, and unsettling experiences of your life.

finals weeks get easier after this. they never get objectively easy...finals are hard, and will require late nights of studying even as an upperclassman. but, the more law school finals you take, the better idea you'll have on how to take them in the future. as much advice as we can try to give here, it's no substitute for experience. it's no substitute for familiarity with the stressful testing environment. it's no substitute for wading through those fact patterns, shoving the stress to the back of your mind, flipping through that immaculately-tabbed outline [if you're fortunate enough to have a open-book final], and spotting as many issues as you can in the three hours you have.

and now, here's my advice for what to do over the next couple weeks:

relax. have fun. spend time with your friends. party. stay out all night. stay in bed all day. watch football, or watch some bad reality television. read books that have nothing to do with the law.

overdose on all the things you had to eschew during finals and in the weeks leading up to it. you've earned it. ♥

Monday, December 03, 2007

Run Run as Fast as You Can

If you are a 1L (or a law student for that matter) and you are sitting inside your law library or law school reading this post while you procrastinate on studying for your exams GET OUT OF THE LAW SCHOOL NOW!

I posted my musings on coffee shop studying over at Useless Dicta earlier today. I am now back from said coffee shop and am happy to report that I managed to knock out 1/2 of my evidence outline in 4.5 hours of coffee shop studying today. (and I'm the biggest procrastinator in the world so it's kind of a huge deal that I sat down for 4.5 hours straight and got some serious work done).

I don't know why it took me so long to figure out that studying in the law school actually impedes my progress due to all of the stress in the air, but it does. Actually, I kind of figured out that the stress inside the law building was not conducive to my studying during the first week of first semester exams last year, but instead of finding a good study spot off campus to study I made the bigger mistake of trying to study at home. There are WAY too many distractions at home to try and get any kind of substantial work done during exam periods.

Anyways, the point of this rambling is that if you are finding yourself unable to get anything done or even convience yourself to get started on studying for exams then a change of scenery just might do the trick.

I wish I would have known just how crazy law students can be when exam season comes a knocking.........and I wish I would have known about the cheap refill policy on coffee at the coffee house up the street..........