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Hasn't been a great first term. Put in a solid amount of work, though not nearly enough and probably less than most. Not great progress learning the material. Am fine with a topic or two from a course here or there, but have a lot of stuff I need to get down (and obviously fast). Have only been able to really get going for finals since turning in a legal writing assignment a few days ago, and am overwhelmed. I tend to catastrophize things a little, but I think I am correct in thinking exams will be a pretty rough experience for me as of my current pace learning the material, etc. Anyone been in this situation before? Have some advice? How few hours is it possible to sleep a night to maximize prep time?

bmr456 wrote:Hasn't been a great first term. Put in a solid amount of work, though not nearly enough and probably less than most. Not great progress learning the material. Am fine with a topic or two from a course here or there, but have a lot of stuff I need to get down (and obviously fast). Have only been able to really get going for finals since turning in a legal writing assignment a few days ago, and am overwhelmed. I tend to catastrophize things a little, but I think I am correct in thinking exams will be a pretty rough experience for me as of my current pace learning the material, etc. Anyone been in this situation before? Have some advice? How few hours is it possible to sleep a night to maximize prep time?

Dude, you're probably fine. You definitely don't need to deprive yourself of sleep to learn the material. Once you get done with your outline I'm sure you'll be fine. Then just drill that and find practice exams with model answers.

You're being judged on how you think more than on how much you know once you're past a certain point. Anything that screws with your brain like being tired or sick will get you a worse grade. I pulled one all nighter in law school, and it was because I hadn't opened the textbook before that night. That's the only time it's worth killing your immune system.

By far the most important part to doing well is being good at law exams. If you have that down don't stress the material too much. It really doesn't take too long to outline and learn a course. As others have said no reason you need to be losing sleep or doing anything crazy.

You need to sleep to process the material you are learning. It's going to be a tough slog heading into finals (in my experience, every single exam period in school was kinda tough) but you have time. I'm sure two weeks from now your grasp of the material will be far beyond what it is now.

Counterpoint, I got my best 1L Fall grade on the exam I pulled an all-nighter for (but took a 15 minute power nap 1 hour before the exam). I then took applied this strategy to marked improvements later on, of basically fucking around for 11 weeks of the semester, and learning everything at the rate of about 22 hrs/day at the end.

Point is, do what works for you. I imagine you learned what worked for you in undergrad...it's really not that much different