Megalophobia

Relevant anecdote: One of my recurring nightmares as a child was being inside of a massive factory. Something about the sheer size of the gears and machinery terrified me.

I've only had one panic attack in my life. I don't mean that I got kinda of anxious and couldn't sleep. I mean that I was actually hyperventilating.  It was while I was in Korea clerking at a law firm the summer before my first LSAT. I was laying on the couch in my uncle's living room because the AC was stronger in there and my mind started wandering about the test that I had begun to study for. The LSAT determines which schools you get admitted to and how much scholarship money you're offered. Which determines which school you actually get into...which has a huge impact on whether you get a job and what kind of job you get if you're lucky enough to get one....which determines your quality of life....and panic attack. I had convinced myself that my ability to sit down and study logic games for a few hours a day would have a direct impact on my quality of life decades down the road. And the scary thing is that it was actually true.

The legal profession leaves very little room for "unique-ness." It's very formulaic. Test scores are translated into acceptances. Attendance is translated into grades. Grades are translated into jobs. Whatever unique qualities or talents you have to offer only matter after you've made the cut in terms of your grades and honors.

And so we come to one of the dilemmas of being a first-year law student. If you're informed about the nature of the game, you're in perpetual fear about how important your daily activities are in terms of their impact on your future. If you're not terrified, then it just means that you either 1. don't understand what's going on or 2. don't care enough.

I try to avoid looking at the big picture, because the big picture is as terrifying maze of uncertainty. I could slack off tonight...but that might become a habit...which could reduce my performance on my first-year exams...which could lead to unemployment. It's a very slippery slope. And thinking about it is terrifying. It's the massive factory all over again.

Call it the butterfly effect. Call it a slippery slope. Call it whatever you want, but the reality is that the time has ended for big picture thinking. Not this year. This year, we take it a day at a time. A class at a time. And we try not to look too far ahead.

Naptime Perils

Was gonna write a super interesting post about the different types of people in law school...but I overslept my nap and am just now starting my work. Nap management is apparently a necessary skill to master.

Lets see how quickly I can read my Torts and Contracts readings.

Not in Kansas anymore

Law school isn't college. But college isn't high school. High school isn't middle school. Blah blah blah. Like most people, I grew up being inundated with warnings from teachers and older students alike about how "not like" some new environment was compared to the previous one. "You're not children anymore. You're adults" is probably the most overused statement of every middle school, high school, and college orientation. So the whole "law school isn't college" warning didn't carry as much weight with me as much as it probably should have.

So what's the reality? The reality is that law school is whatever you want it to be. If you treat it like college, it'll be like college. If you treat it like a job, it'll be like a job. When I talk about "treating something like XYZ," I'm talking primarily about how students approach their workload and school-related responsibilities. Social habits and leisure time is individual-specific and from what I've seen isn't really connected to how you approach your studies. Some of my hardest working classmates get wasted regularly...and some of my laziest classmates stay home on weekends reading literature. Yup it's true, nerds can be stupid. Which sort of negates their only redeeming quality (that they're supposedly smart).

Anyway we've already established that law school becomes what you make it. But you'll be doing yourself a disservice if you treat law school like college, because law school is fundamentally different from college in terms of workflow and structure. This isn't Kansas anymore.

In college, you get homework. You take unit exams. Daily quizzes. Papers. Group projects. All your classes are conveniently segmented so that you can hop scotch from one assignment to the next. There are consequences for not completing them. My university forced me to take a bunch of classes I didn't care about and wasn't relevant to my career (e.g. biology...medieval literature...MATH). So as an undergraduate I just did the work that needed to be done, when it needed to be done, and just played in between. The work wasn't especially hard. I wasn't especially interested in most of the subjects. Easy peasy. In college you play all the time and work when you need to. So don't ever leave college. Ever.

In law school you work all the time and play when you can...which is almost never. There's no homework, which means your workflow is completely up to you (which usually means you end up working all the time). The stakes are high because most people are borrowing a lot of money to attend and because legal hiring is extremely grade-sensitive, especially for higher paying jobs. Law school is the ultimate trap for procrastinators. Zero structure and extremely high stakes.

And you're not just working all the time. You're working all the time learning the same thing with the same people. Needless to say, it becomes suffocating. All your classmates are taking the same classes, studying the same subjects. Your daily schedule is centered around mastering the same 3-4 disciplines. So gym time, meals, fun, Skyping with friends back home, walking your dog, bar hopping etc... all of that takes a backseat to the questions "Can I finish this Torts reading by a reasonable hour? Do I need to outline Contracts tonight, or will I remember it long enough to do it tomorrow?"

If it sounds miserable it's because it is sometimes. Burnout is a real thing here since you're actually working. In undergrad the only times I ever experienced "burnout" was when I put off some major assignment until the night before. So it was self-inflicted.  But here? I'm burning out just trying to keep up. But then I think about what the med students are going through and all of sudden everything is okay again.

There's a silver lining though (if you want to call it that). The reality is that you go to law school because you want to be there (presumably). And it's easier to study a subject when you know it's directly relevant to your future and you're studying it voluntarily...unlike Statistics 201 or Literature 300. So it's not too bad. Especially if you meet and work with the right people...but that's a topic for a different day.

If you're reading this as an undergrad. Seriously, never leave. Kansas is so much more fun.

About Me

There's a series of study rooms behind the cafe of my law school that my classmates and I have come to call Gunner's Row. Unfortunately I find myself in these rooms very often, but I'm not gunner. I'm pretty quiet in my classes. Anyway my hope is that his blog will give readers an inside look into what life is like as a first-year law student. It's also therapeutic for me since it gives me a break from learning exciting things like adverse possession and forward contracts.

If you're here looking for study tips...you won't find it until at least January 2014 since that's when I get my Fall semester grades. For your benefit I've decided not to talk about study habits and tactics until I can be sure that they do indeed yield good results.

Anyway, about me. I'm from the northeast, went to college in the northeast, and took a year off after college before law school. I took the LSAT way more times than I wanted or expected. I'm fortunate enough to be attending a school ranked in the top 20 on a full scholarship. This is something I'm extremely thankful for considering how much debt the average law student is forced to incur to get their degree.

I wanted to be a lawyer since I was about 16 for the usual blend of reasons. The money was attractive, I thought I was smarter than it turns out I am, I liked the confrontational aspect of it, the idea of helping people gave me a sense of purpose etc... etc...My reasons changed every year. Usually because people kept criticizing my existing reasons so I needed to find new ones to justify my interest, especially in this economy.

To be honest I still don't have a "satisfactory" answer to the question "Why do you want to be a lawyer?" Everything sounds naive and cliche at this point, a sentiment that most of my peers seem to agree with. You'll have your handful of people who are passionate about a certain field such as prosecution or intellectual property. But other than that most people in this economy respond with "whatever job I can get" when asked which type of law they want to practice.

Anyway, that's enough about me. I hope that you'll enjoy reading this blog as much as I'll enjoy writing it.