Nose Down, Keep Going

Ugh. This is the last day of spring break and honestly, I just don't want to go back to school. Can I quit now?

Ok, so I'm not quitting, and I'm sure it won't be as bad as it seems. But I do need to get my mind focused on school again for this final two-month push to the end of 1L. Partly as a way of doing that I just re-read Shelley's law school advice, part 1 over at The Menagerie. (She's also posted a few more tips here.) I've been meaning to point to this advice for some time; 1Ls-to-be might find it especially helpful to bookmark and return to in August or something. Reading her tips again was helpful at the moment though because they reminded me that everyone has doubts, law school isn't fun for most people, and that's just the way it is. Her last tip is especially helpful at the moment:

As intimidating as it can be at time, this law stuff really isn't that difficult. There's just a lot of it to learn and not much time to learn it. It's a lot of work, but just put your nose down and keep going. The first semester is the worst, and you'll get it -- things will start to click. Just relax (as much as you can -- yoga breathing) and believe in yourself. You'll be fine.

This will be my mantra beginning tomorrow: It's a lot of work, but just put your nose down and keep going. Nose down, keep going. Nose down, keep going.

This plow through to the end will be capped, of course, by exams. Make joyful noises everyone. If you're starting to get just a little worried about those exams (even if you've done them before), Scheherazade says it's normal to be like this:

You are moderately anxious and set yourself an arbitrary goal: "I'm going to study for six hours on Saturday for Class X". And then it's 2 PM on Saturday and you're lounging over brunch reading the paper in complete denial, and then you feel like a miserable undisciplined louse, but you still don't want to study. And then you finally sit down to study at 4:30 and you go "HOLY MOLY I DON'T KNOW EVEN A FRACTION OF THIS AND I DIDN'T LEAVE MYSELF ENOUGH TIME TO LEARN IT AND ALL THE SUCCESSES I'VE HAD BEFORE ARE GOING TO BE PROVEN AS THE LUCKY ACCIDENTS THEY REALLY ARE BECAUSE THIS TIME I REALLY AM A COMPLETE UNPREPARED IDIOT!" And then in this panicked hateful mode you study for about forty-five minutes or an hour and then notice that you've wandered off somewhere else in your head and are making a list of the sailing gear you really ought to buy for next summer and you think, maybe I need a break, or maybe I'm cracking up here, and you take a break and next thing you know it's 10 PM before you're sitting back down to study and the crazy panic sets in again.

This is totally normal, or at least it was for me....

That's it, she nailed it! That's exactly what studying for exams is like for me, too; in fact, any studying is like that for me, recently. So I guess it feels good knowing I'm not alone.

Nose down, keep going.

Rounding out this little tour of topics that may be causing anxiety and some level of depression or dispiritedness in the hearts and minds of courageous 1Ls everywhere: How's that career plan looking? The one thing everyone asks when you tell them you're in law school is: What are you going to do with that? And as Transmogriflaw points out, a lot of us don't have a much more precise answer than, "I don't know." That's why it's so important to hear from the "pros" —so we can figure out what our options are before we make these decisions. In response to Transmogriflaw's post, Scheherazade at Stay of Execution talks about what transactional lawyers do and why she's not interested in litigation, with some good discussion in the comments. This kind of "insider" perspective is invaluable to 1Ls because it's so hard to figure out what different kinds of law practice might actually be like. I wonder how much this dearth of useful information contributes to the fact that more law school grads are leaving the law. Since we don't know what we're getting into when we start or even when we're part of the way through, we're sadly disappointed when we find out what practicing law is really like? Let's hope not.

(Tangent: See, here's another chapter for the blawg book—how blogs are helping law students network and filling in the gaps in their education through the mentoring that practitioner and professor bloggers provide. Oh wait, no time for such tangents now. Nose down, keep going...)

Posted March 14, 2004 02:10 PM | law school