Law school stress vs. UG Forum

[gatorgirl4life]

stress in undergrad?? my high school was MUCH more stressful than my UG...i feel like i've been on vacation for three years.

[Nom Sawyer]

stress in undergrad?? my high school was MUCH more stressful than my UG...i feel like i've been on vacation for three years.

lol is there like some UF TLS club? I've seen wayyyy more UF grads on this board then any other public school.

congrats on the nice gpa with minimal work... i find it hard to believe UG is very stressful too, altho there are types that just load themselves down with a ton of extracurriculurs

[Unemployed]

lol my sarcasm is not getting thru i think...

but anyways, your at NYU right? did you just have a game plan that you set out to follow early on and it paid off? or u just winged it and came out ok?

I'm a humorless person. Naturally, I chose Columbia over NYU. We have this thing called "legal methods" for three weeks before other classes begin - it's pretty much a law school boot camp where the professor assigns hundreds of pages of reading every night (M-F). I was burned out in three weeks. Although my career goal has changed since then, I had a specific practice in mind and had a safety net (someone who would hire me regardless of GPA), so I didn't try too hard.

I had no game plan. Just a bottom line. I was satisfied so long as I felt like I had a firm grasp on everything. If not, I actually cracked the casebooks/hornbooks open.

[Nom Sawyer]

lol my sarcasm is not getting thru i think...

but anyways, your at NYU right? did you just have a game plan that you set out to follow early on and it paid off? or u just winged it and came out ok?

I'm a humorless person. Naturally, I chose Columbia over NYU. We have this thing called "legal methods" for three weeks before other classes begin - it's pretty much a law school boot camp where the professor assigns hundreds of pages of reading every night (M-F). I was burned out in three weeks. Although my career goal has changed since then, I had a specific practice in mind and had a safety net (someone who would hire me regardless of GPA), so I didn't try too hard.

I had no game plan. Just a bottom line. I was satisfied so long as I felt like I had a firm grasp on everything. If not, I actually cracked the casebooks/hornbooks open.

but you did quite well I take it? hmmm wonder if your case is typical

[gatorgirl4life]

haha thanks and well...there are 50,000 of us, gators like to let everyone else know that they're gators, and i'm not sure how it is at other schools, but almost every liberal arts major i know is going to law school.

[Unemployed]

lol my sarcasm is not getting thru i think...

but anyways, your at NYU right? did you just have a game plan that you set out to follow early on and it paid off? or u just winged it and came out ok?

I'm a humorless person. Naturally, I chose Columbia over NYU. We have this thing called "legal methods" for three weeks before other classes begin - it's pretty much a law school boot camp where the professor assigns hundreds of pages of reading every night (M-F). I was burned out in three weeks. Although my career goal has changed since then, I had a specific practice in mind and had a safety net (someone who would hire me regardless of GPA), so I didn't try too hard.

I had no game plan. Just a bottom line. I was satisfied so long as I felt like I had a firm grasp on everything. If not, I actually cracked the casebooks/hornbooks open.

but you did quite well I take it? hmmm wonder if your case is typical

Much more typical than people let on. It's an open secret that the 2L's and 3L's don't tell you for some reason.

[Nom Sawyer]

haha thanks and well...there are 50,000 of us, gators like to let everyone else know that they're gators, and i'm not sure how it is at other schools, but almost every liberal arts major i know is going to law school.

yeah.. thats probably true.. also a lot of UT people running around... wonder why I never see any UNC ones tho

where are you planning on going to law school next year?

[violinst]

I may finally get glasses before I step into the holy institution of legal study.

[gatorgirl4life]

haha thanks and well...there are 50,000 of us, gators like to let everyone else know that they're gators, and i'm not sure how it is at other schools, but almost every liberal arts major i know is going to law school.

yeah.. thats probably true.. also a lot of UT people running around... wonder why I never see any UNC ones tho

where are you planning on going to law school next year?

no idea yet...i'm a junior planning on taking the lsat in october.

[Unemployed]

I may finally get glasses before I step into the holy institution of legal study.

A single-ended amplifier I see. You sure you don't wear glasses now?

[Nom Sawyer]

haha thanks and well...there are 50,000 of us, gators like to let everyone else know that they're gators, and i'm not sure how it is at other schools, but almost every liberal arts major i know is going to law school.

yeah.. thats probably true.. also a lot of UT people running around... wonder why I never see any UNC ones tho

where are you planning on going to law school next year?

no idea yet...i'm a junior planning on taking the lsat in october.

ahhh... don't feel ready for the June one? usually the best one to take... gives you a first shot and then you have October as backup if necessary (what I did)

[gatorgirl4life]

well, i might still take the june. i got a 155 on my cold diagnostic a month ago and a 163 on my 2nd diagnostic last weekend. but i want to get at least a 168 and haven't had much time to study lately with finals coming up...and all my friends turning 21 at the same time lol. regardless of when i take it, i'll have the rest of my apps ready by october. can't you send in your application before your lsat score?

[Nom Sawyer]

well, i might still take the june. i got a 155 on my cold diagnostic a month ago and a 163 on my 2nd diagnostic last weekend. but i want to get at least a 168 and haven't had much time to study lately with finals coming up...and all my friends turning 21 at the same time lol. regardless of when i take it, i'll have the rest of my apps ready by october. can't you send in your application before your lsat score?

yeah, but theres no need... if you submit immediately once the LSAT score comes out for October you should be fine. That's pretty early (when I submitted) as most people are still scrambling to finish their apps after the scores come out.

Taking the summer to prepare hard and then finishing apps early is a pretty good approach too. Just make sure you actually have your apps all ready to go for the score release

[gatorgirl4life]

well, i might still take the june. i got a 155 on my cold diagnostic a month ago and a 163 on my 2nd diagnostic last weekend. but i want to get at least a 168 and haven't had much time to study lately with finals coming up...and all my friends turning 21 at the same time lol. regardless of when i take it, i'll have the rest of my apps ready by october. can't you send in your application before your lsat score?

yeah, but theres no need... if you submit immediately once the LSAT score comes out for October you should be fine. That's pretty early (when I submitted) as most people are still scrambling to finish their apps after the scores come out.

Taking the summer to prepare hard and then finishing apps early is a pretty good approach too. Just make sure you actually have your apps all ready to go for the score release

ok thanks

[270910]

Unemployed is really on to something. There is SO much work unnecessary work that can be done. Hilariously, after every exam I walked out of I cross-checked my intuition by asking people 'Did you feel like you would have done better on that exam if you had studied the law/doctrine harder?' - and same question after grades.

Nobody said yes.

Don't even get me started on cold call prep / the facts of cases.

Still, you can be told this until you're blue in the face and you can do it perfectly and you will still head into finals with 0 feedback and a keen awareness of the stakes. The stress will always be there.

[prezidentv8]

Unemployed is really on to something. There is SO much work unnecessary work that can be done. Hilariously, after every exam I walked out of I cross-checked my intuition by asking people 'Did you feel like you would have done better on that exam if you had studied the law/doctrine harder?' - and same question after grades.

Nobody said yes.

Don't even get me started on cold call prep / the facts of cases.

Still, you can be told this until you're blue in the face and you can do it perfectly and you will still head into finals with 0 feedback and a keen awareness of the stakes. The stress will always be there.

Phone call after my first round of finals:

Mom: "How did you do?"

Me: "No idea"

Mom: "What do you mean?"

Me: "I wrote as much down as I could. That's about it. When there were word limits I cut grammar and tried to phrase things in really concise ways and when there were page limits I abbreviated almost everything. Hopefully that pays off."

Mom: "Well did you study enough?"

Me: "I studied way too much. I should have studied less, definitely."

Mom: "I don't understand."

Me: "Neither do I. Law exams are dumb."


Apparently I did fine. No idea why or how. My formula for success:

Grades = f(natural law exam skill/writing style, exam strategy, formatting/grammar/word choice, game day performance relative to your average performance, luck, issue spotting [practice exams + E&E] practice, reading hornbooks for issues that lack clarity [Erie, proximate cause, etc.], amount of feedback).

Quantity of studying matters not, once you get past sort of a baseline minimum, which everyone does.

[prezidentv8]

Also, stress really doesn't help anyone at all. No need to stress. Don't stress.

[TTT-LS]

.

[didionye]

Overconfidence of this kind is the worst sort of danger for a 1L.[/quote]

So what would you recommend?

[TTT-LS]

.

[270910]

Overconfidence of this kind is the worst sort of danger for a 1L.

So what would you recommend?

Humility, hard work, liquor, perseverance, an ability to push yourself through darker moments, and a willingness to figure out the system (from upperclassmen, TLS, books like getting to maybe, etc.) well in advance of exams?

[didionye]

Relaxing a little over 0L summer, getting comfortable with the idea that you know next to nothing and that's okay, entering 1L year with as clear a vision of what you want to do your 1L summer as possible (and having a resume, etc. polished & ready such that you won't have to work on that during the late fall exam-time crunch). If you're particularly neurotic and simply must look at books, look at one geared towards exam writing, like GTM.

While opinions on the matter vary, my view is that 1L year is a little bit like holding a fish. If you grip on tight, it'll slip right out. But if you hold it nice and loose, it'll stay put. Your legal writing classes are going to tell you to write in an entirely new and seemingly strange manner. Don't fight it. Accept the new way of doing business and run with it. Accept that doctrinal classes are nothing like anything you've ever taken un UG, including "law" classes in UG, and run with that too.

So there are new ways of writing exams too? this just keeps getting more scarier

[prezidentv8]

0L advice given is good. I still don't think that conceptually the material is very hard, nor that law school inherently requires mass amounts of stressing.

I will say this though: you really have to be okay with inefficiency in the learning process and uncertainty regarding how exactly to score well, and you especially have to be very comfortable with taking advice, trying stuff out, and quickly rejecting or adjusting the advice if you determine it's not working for you. Unwavering confidence in your abilities will be necessary to avoid the stress, especially if you don't enter law school as a very well-credentialed academic/social bucket of awesome and/or if your first semester grades are lower than you'd like.

Point being: be confident and adaptable, have fun, enjoy the material and try to appreciate it for what it is...and don't get frustrated if you fail here or there, because you will.