1L: 1st Semester

I stopped posting on here when I started law school. While there were moments where I could have written posts, I wanted to devote my full attention to doing well. Also, in my free time I either wanted to be spending it with my wife or doing something where I did not have to think.

Here are a few of my thoughts from the previous months:

7/5/10

Quickly approaching the end of 3CR, my wedding and starting law school. A weird time. Almost like the calm before the storm. Trying to clutch to the present and enjoy my time, not really easy with how excited I am for everything.

7/15/10

Idea: Make a blog that includes things that you googled. So you have the question and then your eventual answer if you found it. (why do this? who cares??)

8/11/10

Following a great wedding and about a week before law school starts. Really excited to get started with law school. I am trying to make sure I am as prepared as I can be.

8/24/10 (first day of law school)

The school has been nothing but welcoming and open over orientation and the first day. This, I think, has helped calm down all the type-A's starting law school. Yet, under the surface level calm I have a bunch of anxiety over doing well. I get the sense that most others do too. When success is defined by one test at the end of the year you must take a certain mindset to retain your sanity. I am still trying to find that mindset.

8/26/10

Law school is tough. But not tough because it is hard to comprehend and not necessarily the workload (which can be challenging). It is tough because there are so many different routes to take and no one is exactly sure which way to go. Read the cases? Brief the cases? Hornbooks? When to outline?

This is hard and exhilarating all at the same time. I like competition and challenge.

9/9/10

Starting to figure everything out better. Now it is time to ratchet up the work.

10/15/10

In a good place. Up to date on my work. Outlines looking good. Into the homestretch and feeling good. Time to start ratcheting it up.

12/15/10

One semester of law school in the books. I enjoyed it, but have no idea how I did. After all the exams I couldn't help but remember the following section from One Lon finals: 

I felt insulted by them--there's no other way to put it. Finals were regarded with an institutional earnestness which had left my classmates and me believing for months that the tests would offer some consummate evaluation, not simply of how well we'd learned, but--almost mystically--of the depths of our capacity in the law. Exams were something to point to, a proving ground for all the hard and sincere labor. And instead they have been intellectual quick-draw contests, frantic exercises that seemed to place no premium on the sustained insight and imagination which I most admired in others, and when they occurred, felt proudest of in myself.

I knew going in that the finals would not necessarily measure my intellectual capacity for the law, but I was (and still am) very much aware of their ability to affect my capacity to find employment.

12/26/10

Enjoying the break.

Photo: eflon