Vacation

Getting ready to fly to Boise for the last vacation before law school starts. Can't wait for a great weekend with family and friends!

More next week!

Paranoia, Paranoia, Everybody's coming to get me....

I just had lunch with my S.O. (affectionally known as K), and we had a long discussion about what law school may or may not be like. And I came to the realization that the students telling us to study 50-60 hours a week may have been exaggerating (I hope!), and the one telling us that he only studied 10-15 hours was under exaggerating (I hope not!). Either way, it doesn't matter to me. I will study what I need to study to learn the material and to get a good grasp on it. Honestly, I'm just glad that I wasn't the kid asking "wait, the book list is out? what do you mean we have first week readings?" or the one who had no idea that our grades were based on midterms and finals. I've done a lot of 'homework' for law school, and I feel like I at least know the mechanics of what to expect. And the cherry on the proverbial cake is that I have K, who is so fantastically supportive that I don't have to worry about him thinking I'm not spending enough time with him, or doing enough for him, or any of that BS. He gets it, and just wants to support me. That makes me an extremely lucky girl.

Challenging Success

Tonight was the 'How to be Successful in Law School' event. There's some great professors at school, and it seems as if they're all really invested in our success. I'm glad to see this and have spent some time asking questions and talking to them. I think the one thing I've done that they all said was to calendar your time. Now, I'm not going to calendar in going to the grocery store or doing laundry, but I have budgeted in over half of my study time during the week, and then am giving myself either Sat or Sun partly off.

Tonight, hearing about the crazy study time was scary, but hearing from everyone also made me feel optimistic. Unfortunately, real life got in the way afterwards, and I'm in a pretty shitty mood, but that's what happens I guess. It'll get resolved eventually.

Looking forward to working tomorrow a (hopefully) easy day and then the gym, and packing for this weekend. Can't wait for my last vacation to see all my family and eat some Basque food and drink some great beer with great people!

The reading list posts Monday. They said not to start our reading until the week before school. I'm thinking I might try and brief the cases next week, and just make sure I go back and re-read again. I was hoping to get some syllabus' at some point to stay a week ahead like is recommended, but I'll just have to settle for cramming the first few weeks and doing my best to get ahead.

I feel like I have a great support system at the school at least, so that's a great thing. Time to try and forget about the shitty part of my evening and relax. Til next time.

Caio

1920 pages and the smallest font ever

...make up Black's Law Dictionary. Holy hell, this thing must weigh about a billion* pounds! If this is what I'm looking forward to with all of my law books, maybe I should use the rolling bag the school so nicely gave me.

Unfortunately, I'm at work running on about 2 hours of sleep and have a crazy painful sinus infection. I'm strangely okay with it since I'm hoping I can get all the sickness out before school starts. Fortunately I have a super cool boss, and am going to leave work probably momentarily. I have a little guilt over it since I'm taking Friday off as well, but I'm useless sitting here in this much pain.

Off to get some work done before I get to go home and try and sleep.

*this may be a slight exaggeration

Countdown

Three weeks and counting. More meetings and mixers this week, and my last vacation of the summer next weekend. My books are on the way, and I'm writing this on my shiny brand new laptop. I guess it really is almost time for law school.

I'm an idiot

Yesterday when the book list came out, I was little miss pep-in-my-step and immediately went online and ordered all of the books used from Amazon (discounts whoo!). I was proud of myself for not ordering the one "suggested" book, and just ordered the required ones. I've read enough online to know to wait to see what the professor is like and what's really needed. I haven't ordered any supplements or anything yet (I'm a little behind on all the acronym's - barbri, e&e, 7&7, etc) and wanted to wait to see what my professors had to say before I purchased anything extra. Anyway, then my (apparently much smarter) classmates posted on our forum about how they got Blacks Law Dictionary for $30 and one student got last years edition, and how that's fine to use, etc etc. And here's me, who paid $100 for a new copy on Amazon.com lookin like a total idiot. "hey guys! look at my brand new shiny law dictionary! wooot!"

Gotta say, for the first 'hang your head in shame' moment of law school, that one wasn't so bad. Now, if I could just get over my anxiety about the Socratic method...that'd be great.

Oh, and someone finally gave us the deets on support people orientation. I don't even have to go! How sweet is that?! I get to miss the one law school mixer where there's no alcohol involved. :)

Until next time.

Book List

Finally posted! And I got some information from other students about dates and times. Unfortunately the admissions department didn't know anything when I called. Here's to hoping this makes more sense as law school goes on.

Cerealistically

Does everyone get this 0L stress? School is 3 and 1/2 weeks away, and orientation dates are set, but no times. And there's no book list yet, and the support person meetings haven't been announced yet (other than tentative days). I get that this is all very normal, and everyone else has the same thing going on, and I should just relax, but I've spent the whole summer being fun and spontaneous, and now that law school is here - I just want to know what's going on and when. :) Remember when I said I have a little bit of manic in me?? I wasn't kidding. I gotta work on that.

Summer before 1L

I'm sitting at my desk reading law blogs, tired of work and of being so busy, and wondering if I shouldn't have taken more time off this summer. Between working out 3-4 nights a week, and working full time, I feel exhausted, and completely unprepared. I doubt that it's really because of everything that I have going on, as far as I can tell, everyone else feels completely unprepared too.

I've spent my day working and scouring the internet for what  note taking software I want to use, and I've figured out that I'm going to download Circus Ponies when I get home and give that a whirl, since I can't use Microsoft One Note on my mac.

I feel like I should be preparing and really learning how to functionally use this mac so that when school starts I'm ready to go.

Here's to hoping law school isn't a dark black hole with no social life and not a minute to spare.

Introduction

In the summer before law school I found myself doing what every other 0L was doing...scouring the internet for tips, advice, smoke signals, carrier pigeons, anyone, anything, with any experience, that could tell me that maybe law school isn't going to be as horrendous as I originally thought. Here's what I actually found: that law school students are a bunch of narcissistic, funny people. And they ALL blog. So hell, here we go, I decided to jump on that bandwagon and see where it takes me.

Today is officially a month until I start my 1L experience as a part time evening student while working full time during the day. I've bought the requisite expensive mac, read the requisite books, and am now trying to squeeze every last drop of fun out of my summer with my boyfriend. Who I feel like is completely unprepared to see the maniac I'm about to turn into. Although, since we haven't gotten our reading lists yet, and dates and times for orientation and support person meetings are still 'tenative', I think he's starting to get a glimpse of my manic-ness. I feel like need some sort of concrete plans here so I can at least prepare myself for what to expect. Which we all know is a pile of bull, since I have absolutely no idea what to expect. I'm flying blind here, but there's comfort that all the other 0L's are just as blind.

At least I've found some comfort that relationships can make it through 1L, and that 3-4 hours outside of class per class hour isn't how much work there actually is. I keep hearing that this is going to be one of the most challenging things I ever do. And I guess at the end of the day, I'm ready to meet that challenge head on. Welcome to legally challenged. Enjoy.