Life of a Law Student

So, I told y'all that if I got a bad grade, I would write on it and I intend to keep my promise. I got my other grades back on Thursday and Friday and the one on Thursday absolutely broke me. I had to walk out and calm myself down in a study group, while still trying to complete the torts homework I hadn't finished (I found out the grade about 40 minutes before Torts). It was bad, y'all. Like after class my professor came up to me and asked if I had a bad cold and I had to explain that it just wasn't a good morning so far. He understood and he had even given us a pep talk prior to actually getting to the lesson. I wasn't the lowest score, but I wasn't middle of the pack either, and actually was below the average score (what a blow to the ego). So, here's how I'm dealing with my grade. Taking a night off to decompress. I took Thursday off after class to cry and forget my problems. Probably time wasted, but I was able to hang out with my roommate all n

So, midterms are over. Thank the Lord it's done and over with for this semester. I'll be honest, there were a couple breakdowns, a few too many tears, and a lot of curse words thrown at my roommate (sorry). However, I got my Torts midterm grade back pretty quickly and I ended up getting the top grade. A few more tears might have been shed in class when I received that news (he kept dragging out handing back the tests and I convinced myself I had gotten the lowest grade, so it was just a huge relief.) I wanted to share with y'all how I did it. 1. Practice Exams       Now, my Torts professor told us we had to do approximately 15 to 20 before the midterm (so roughly about 5 per week.) and he only accepts two practice exams per semester. Now this professor is incredibly particular on how he wants his practice exams done. So, I did it to his specifications and turned one in. It was on intentional torts, which means it was a race horse. You didn't get time to think deeply

So, today I wanted to talk about one thing that I noticed a lot of people in my group have trouble with: staying happy and motivated in law school.  I'm no expert by any means on law school life, but I've noticed I'm not as stressed as everyone else is. Here are a few tips that I've found work for me. Stay ahead of the reading! Every Friday I begin working on the next weeks workload. Every day I work on my homework a little at a time. I usually wait until about noon-ish to start, but I'll then continue working until about 5 or 6 every night if possible. This allows me to not stress about the reading I didn't finish or didn't understand because there isn't a huge time crunch.  Get the Barbri supplemental material. The material they include with your pre-registration for bar prep is amazing! It includes black letter law, explanations of cases, outlines, and practice exams. BUT, and this is a HUGE but, do not rely on the material solely. You shoul

Day 1: Nervous, exhausted, and relieved. Those are the words I would use to describe myself for my first day. Generally before something big, I get so nervous and anxious that I can hardly sleep, hence the exhausted portion of my description.  My first class was legal research and writing, what an exciting way to start my day and week. But surprisingly, it wasn't half bad. It probably (read: hopefully) won't give me nightmares like McKee's legal writing class did. It went uneventfully slow, which was nice. Then I had nearly a 3 hour break between that class and next, which was filled with homework for the next days contracts class (which I had been putting off doing up until that point). My next class will probably be one of my favorite classes throughout the semester, Criminal Law and Procedure. If any of you know me, you know I love a good criminal case. I love figuring out the defenses and how to get around the defenses. Just in general, I really enjoy crimin

This new laptop is amazing. I am absolutely in love with it. The whole thing is so light weight, and the fact that it can turn over and become a tablet makes me love it even more. It's a Lenovo yoga book 2-in-1 laptop/tablet. My cat seems to be pretty impressed with the stylus, which I think he considers his toy. I can take hand written notes, as shown above, and they will be saved onto the laptop in a notebook. This is incredibly helpful to me since I prefer handwritten notes over typed notes, for some reason I am much better at remembering copious amounts of information if it's written. The second thing I adore about this laptop is that if I so wish, I can put the keyboard all the way back to make it into a tablet. This will be a lifesaver for me since I have a real reading addiction. While I was in undergrad, I would carry around all of my books, my laptop if the day called for it, and my tablet reader, plus all the stuff for my physical education c

Experience, experience, experience. Those were the words that were drilled into me from day one in the paralegal program at Mt. SAC. Well, that and "Write, review, review again, review once more, finalize, then review again." (Thanks, McKee.) Up until approximately April of 2017, I had never had an office job. To be fair, I didn't have much experience with customer service either, only working at J.crew in the past. I had other jobs, but they were mainly the average kid jobs (babysitting, dog sitting, mowing the lawns for neighbors, etc.) and a few manual labor jobs through either the county or the city. In other words, I had diddly squat for helpful experience for a career in law. I was extremely fortunate, I thought I wasn't going to get a good internship at all throughout my undergraduate years because I just didn't want to work at a self help center that is local to us. Not that there is anything wrong with working for said self help center, but to be honest