Student Diary: Lidice Dawson, 1L
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Student Diary: Lidice Dawson, 1L |
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So I think I have finally figured it out: 80% of the final exam will be based on the one lecture I missed and the one case I didn't read. The reason I even bring this up is because at this very moment I am trying to reconfigure my 50 page outlines into condensed study guides so I can finally start memorizing the material for the finals. Doable right? Right...(this is where I check out the window to see if any pigs are flying).
As you’ve probably guessed, final exams are once again just around the corner. I was checking the schedule for the exams and I think it will work out a lot better than last semester because this time around we actually have approximately 2-3 days between each exam. Last semester we only had 1 day in between and you don’t need me to tell you that it was not enough. Having the extra days means extra time to prepare (and agonize) for the following exams.
To make things even more F.U.N, (See Webster’s for “sarcasm”) the final memo for legal writing is also due in about a week’s time. From my previous journal entries, I’m sure you’ve all deduced by now that I have a love/hate/hate relationship with legal writing. I’ve been told it’s one of those classes where you either “get it or you don’t.” In my case, I don’t! I am trying to get the memo out of the way this week so I can concentrate on studying for the two weeks we have before finals. Laugh if you will, but I’ve already asked the professor to not send me my graded memos until after the finals are done. I get depressed easily. Lol.
I do have some good news though, I got a job! An actual paying job! The hours are flexible, the area of law is what I am interested in, and I’ve worked with some of the staff before at a different place. I was quick to point out to them, however, that since I am finishing my first year in law school, I am a lot smarter now than when they first knew me. (Note to self: Check window again for those flying pigs.) Did I mention that we get free Starbucks on Fridays??? Seriously, “they had me at hello!”
Since this is my last Journal entry for the year, I want to reminisce a bit about the past year. It was everything that I expected and more. It was hard, intimidating, frustrating, fun, crazy and downright scary! However, I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. Outside of the fact I will owe some serious money to Uncle Sam once I finish law school, I have no regrets. Just think: In a couple of months, you’ll be the ones here in my place, stressing about all the stuff that comes with being a 1L. With this final note, I wish you all the best!
After some busy weeks trying to get caught up for my classes, looking for internships and submitting all appropriate financial aid application materials, I am happy to say things are beginning to settle down. Good news: I got an Internship! Bad news: I still have no clue as to what I want to do this summer! Be prepared…this ratio of good versus bad news aptly applies to the law school experience as a whole.
So about the internship…it’s a public interest position. It’s not in the area I hope to specialize in, but at least it will give me some background experience for working with a public interest organization. It’s unpaid but the hours are flexible which gives me the opportunity to get a part-time job somewhere to cover some of the never ending costs of being a college student. My second option is to go to summer school in the evenings. While that would free up some space in my schedule once school starts, I am not sure if I really want to spend the entire summer pouring over books again. I did that last semester and to be honest, the 2 week break between the end of summer school and the beginning of fall semester just wasn’t enough. A lot of people seem to be taking advantage of the summer studying abroad programs. While a trip to South Africa or Brazil sound absolutely amazing…I really doubt I would be doing much studying if I actually went to either of those places. Let’s be honest here…would you?
Outside of Internships and scholarship applications, I’ve been devoting a lot of time to simply preparing for classes. I don’t think the material this semester is harder, I just think the assignments are longer and therefore they take more time to be finalized. I feel that in most classes I am covering a lot more ground than I was last semester (in a weekly basis). I really don’t have any complaints about my progress in class (and hopefully neither do my professors) so there is not much to say at this point. I can’t say that my study plan/routine has changed greatly since last semester. I have heard some mixed responses from other students as to whether they have changed their manner of study between this semester and the last. I guess it depends how well they did in their exams.
I received a couple of emails about my last blog entry and I just wanted to say thanks for the comments and I am glad I could help out. I tried to reply as quickly as possible, but if for some reason I failed to answer your particular email, please let me know. I hope everyone has a great rest of the week…and don’t forget to vote!
With the start of the spring semester, most if not all students have had hit the ground running. It’s a bit of a shock to have so much to do after nearly 3 weeks filled mainly with holiday celebrations and flicking through T.V. channels. I started receiving emails from my professors about reading assignments for the first week of class around the first week of January. I procrastinated until this past weekend which means I had approximately 140 pages to read and outline in the course of 2 days. I wish I could say I learned my lesson and that I will start preparing earlier next fall semester, but my parents always taught me not to lie. After all, the time off we have from school is very precious considering the fact that most students are working on their resumes and cover letters for upcoming internships and clerkships. Luckily I did not procrastinate on that, and I am happy to say both my resume and cover letter are completed. I was worried about not having those done because so many of the deadlines for summer job opportunities are now in January.
I feel somewhat disappointed that I still have not received my final grades. There was a scholarship opportunity whose January 14th deadline required my Fall semester’s grades. I called them to explain I still had not received my grades but they were not able to make an exception for me. I have a friend who attends a different law school and she has already received her grades, so I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that getting the grades late might pose a problem for the earlier internship application deadlines. However, after conversing with a 2l from Seattle U, she did say that upper division students (meaning 2Ls and 3Ls) usually get their grades a lot faster. I guess this has to do with smaller classes and different formats for the final exams.
I don’t have enough adjectives to describe what the finals were like. I think I felt every emotion known to man ranging from uppermost fear to unbelievable relief. I’d like to discuss the actual time line for the finals because I know I had a lot of questions about this prior to starting law school. While most professors encourage you to start outlining around 6 weeks prior to the actual final’s date, I suggest starting as early as possible. The week before finals I saw a lot of students working on their outlines and I think this was an unnecessary cause of stress. I finished my own outlines approximately 2 weeks prior to the last day of class, so I was able to enjoy a lot of individual study time and reviewing with my study groups. The finals were scheduled in the afternoon ranging from 2 to 5 hours (depending on the number of credits for each class). I must say the shorter finals were harder than the longer finals because proper allocation of time became so detrimental in our successful analysis of multiple exam questions. Students were also given a day off in between each final which were mostly used to review the material for the upcoming finals.
Since I have not yet received my grades, I still have no proper validation as to how well or how poorly I did. This obviously is a source of a great anxiety, but I have been told time and time again to just move forward and not worry so much on how I did. This of course, is advice I have chosen to completely ignore. After all, compulsive obsession is just part of my personality (for those who know me), and I just wouldn’t know what to do with myself If I didn’t worry.
On to a happier subject, I survived my Civil Procedure exam. For all of you who have heard me complain and bemoan about all those nasty little rules, I hope you’ve enjoyed your time off from my lamentations. I was re-assured by my 3 bosses at the law firm where I work, that they felt the same away about that particular exam.
I also wanted to say welcome back to all of you. I miss my family and friends back home so much during the school year, but I didn’t realize how much I would miss all the friends I have made this past semester. These are people we see not only nearly every day, but also for a large part of each day. No wonder we have all become so close. Last but not least, I just wanted to say thank you to my husband (as always) for his support through those 3 long weeks of finals where I became a veritable grouch. I don’t think I bit all his fingers off, but nonetheless, he was the one that kept patting me on the back and saying…”one more day youngster…one more day”.
Talk about horrifying…I just spent Halloween night sitting at home, browsing through stacks of “constructive eviction” cases trying to figure out if 15 cases were sufficient for the legal memorandum that is due for my Legal Writing class. It has dawned on me that I only have 5 weeks left of class before finals start. Following the old adage that “innocence is bliss”, I am trying my best to forget how near this semester is to finishing. Unfortunately, I have wonderful friends who remind me daily that the finals are just around the corner. I also have a teacher who keeps sending the first years students little reminders to breathe. (I hope you are reading this Chach!) I am breathing! I am breathing so hard I am hyperventilating. Ok, ok…maybe it’s not so bad, but adding a little drama to this journal entry is half the fun!
Outside of realizing that judgment day is almost here, I can’t help but feel relief. I am glad the semester is almost over. I am glad I won’t have to do any reading for the 3 weeks I have off during the winter break. Most of all, however, I am looking forward to having my finals graded so I can finally figure out if I am on the right path or not. I am sure you all realize this, but in Law School, finals are pretty much the only feedback you’ll get of your actual progress in class. We spend months reading and briefing cases after cases and then discussing them in class but teachers don’t give out grades based on the amount of work we do or how well we are able to decipher a certain rule in our class discussions. Nope…it’s all about the final exams. Talk about pressure huh? I keep having to remind myself that as a law student I am supposed to thrive on pressure! Righttt…
I have some good news though: I have been called out on class and I have survived. I have to admit that my hands were shaking so badly I had a death grip on my coffee cup, but outside of that, I didn’t stammer or choke even once. I never had issues speaking in public before law school, but there is something intimidating about discussing legal rules with your law professor. Reading a handful of cases on a particular subject does not make me an expert and yet I am supposed to argue my opinion before the whole class? That goes so against my inner rule of keeping my mouth shut when I have nothing better to say.
Thanksgiving is almost around the corner and I haven’t really made any plans. I have asked friends from school and we’re all wondering how much catching up we’ll have to do if we actually take time off during the holiday. I think I will just play it safe and make my husband cook the Turkey dinner in case I need extra time to work on my Legal Writing assignment. I have a feeling that November is going to go by so fast it will be the Holiday season before any of us realize it.
Well, it’s time for another Starbucks run. I don’t know if I have mentioned before, but I have a Starbucks fairy-godmother. Her name is Vivian and without her collaboration I would have to take out more loans to support my caffeine addiction. Thanks to her, I am bright eyed and bushy tailed on those late evenings you see me working at the law library.
I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving holiday!!!
The last six weeks have come and gone really fast. I had this really optimistic agenda of how I would break down my work load on a daily basis, but things don’t always turn out the way you plan. The one thing I didn’t expect was how many meetings and workshops we would be required to go to. I try to stay as well informed about the school’s extra-curricular activities and opportunities available as much as possible, but sometimes you just have to say “enough is enough”.
My classes seem to be going well (this really is a matter of opinion of course) and I am happy to say I have some great professors who put up with my daily emails and cries of self-pity. I got a job at the library working part-time to support my Starbucks addiction and this has really helped me to become acquainted with all the resources that the school offers its students (research tips, study guides, software…etc). Working at the library forces me to sit down and get my work done. It’s not like I am going home anytime soon.
I really don’t have anything to complain about except that I now have no notion of what day of the week it really is. A friend texted me the other day wishing me a Happy Friday and my response was: It’s Friday? It’s not that I don’t have a life it’s just that I’ve come to realize that Law School now is MY life.
A regular day entails 2-3 classes, one study group session and reading time at the reserve section. Believe it or not the days go by really fast and while it is tiring, I don’t think I am too much of a masochist for saying the work is fun and exciting.
Seattle University is known for its Legal Writing program. Now that I have just turned in a first draft of my very first legal memo, I understand that the prestige is due mostly to how much time the professors spend with the students going over every single citation and grammar rule. The Blue Book has become a constant companion and my love and hate relationship with it is boarding on obsessive.
As always, I want to thank everyone for their support: my husband, the best in-laws ever, family and friends (Adi girl)! Most of all, however, I want to thank the TA’s. I know they have their own courses to deal with, but they have been most helpful in sitting down with me and explaining Civil Procedure rules (12b6) over and over…and over again.
“Someone pinch me…” I kept saying to myself as I walked into Sullivan Hall my first day of class. I spent the last year of my life being so anxious about getting accepted to law school, that it took a couple of days for the fact that I was actually a law school student to sink into my mind. The teachers and staff here at the school have been great about answering my numerous questions and emails about registration, orientation and every other aspect that comes with starting out college life. I highly recommend using all the resources the school provides for you such as the legal writing and analysis workshops, library tours…etc. You can never be too well prepared!
As a 1L I think what has helped me the most in order to prepare for this first year was taking a summer class. While I might have grumbled a bit about abdicating my summer days in lieu of figuring out the nuances of common law and the MPC, it has also given me an advantage in the sense that I have a stronger idea of what is expected of me as a SU law student. I just wanted to throw out a huge thank you to Professors Lustbader, Duarte-White and Boerner. Their support really made a difference.
My husband asked me a couple of days ago as I got home around 7 p.m., if I was going to be staying out “that late” very often. I tried hard not to laugh since I realize that from the time I grab my purse and coffee mug from the kitchen counter in the morning, he has no clue about what I do all day. To remediate the matter, I am planning to bring him over to the Campus next weekend and show him that special Reserve section of library with all those lovely outlines and hornbooks that supplement law student’s daily reading dosage.
The biggest challenge I am having at this moment is making time for life outside
of school. Between keeping current with all the assignments, attending all the
introductory meetings and workshops for 1Ls and working a part time job, I have
literally abdicated any sort of hang out time. I am hoping that now that the
first few weeks have gone by, things will settle down into a less chaotic routine
so I can plan ahead a date night or two. Happy Hour here I come!
For now, my plan of action for the following weeks is to start out my outlines
and incorporate some hypothetical questions into my daily study routine. I just
found out that I have to take a diagnostic test before the semester is over
and while I definitely passed the practice test, I realized I have a major issue
with commas. Or better yet…they have an issue with me. First rule of thinking
like a lawyer: always place the liability on someone (or something) else. So
now it’s time to head back to the library. I am sure I’ll have a
lot more to say by the next submission. Take care and God bless!