Before I began law school, friends who had already gone through 1L year told me that I needed to treat it like having a full-time job. Even if I were out of class at noon, they cautioned, I should probably be studying for the rest of the day, as if I were on the clock for an employer. Now I can appreciate the analogy; during the months of November and December my classmates and I have been putting in some serious overtime. After both my Contracts and Torts classes culminated in the final weeks with sections on “damages,” it’s only appropriate that I reflect back on the semester and, well, assess the damage.
1. I read a lot.
I was assigned more reading in my first semester than I was during four years of undergraduate study. And unlike in undergrad, I was actually required to read most of it.
2. I highlighted… a lot.
For most of my life I assumed that a highlighter was an infinite entity: I never imagined using one to its limits. But now? I don’t think I have ever been so wrong about anything. At the very least, I have done my part to keep BIC and Sharpie in business.
The thing I feared the most coming into law school was the infamous “Socratic Method.” Reading Scott Turow’s One L over the summer had me terrified about some grizzled legal scholar making a mockery of me in front of my peers as he methodically dissected my subpar preparation. Once classes began, my anticipation grew as a few unlucky classmates were the first to be cold-called.
It finally happened when I least expected it. During the fourth week of classes, I took my assigned seat near the back just a minute before my 9:00 a.m. Contracts lecture. I was still yawning and patiently waiting for my coffee to kick in when my professor walked to his lectern at the front of the class. The first words out of his mouth were, “So, Dan, let’s talk about Evertite.” If the caffeine had been failing me, adrenaline had no trouble taking the reins. Before I’d even managed to open my casebook to the correct page, the interrogation began. Luckily, I had read the case the night before and was prepared. For the next 50 minutes I answered a barrage of questions, only being afforded a few chances to collect my thoughts when other students volunteered answers.
But before I knew it, my professor announced our 10-minute break, and I was released from further questioning. Ultimately I realized that being the target of the “Socratic Method” was not so horrible after all. Over the entire semester, I sat through 84 lectures and was subjected to just a handful of harmless “cold-calls.” Certainly not what I had imagined, although I will never forget that first time.
4. Exam period was as draining as advertised…
Over the course of the last several weeks, I easily spent twice as much time in class or studying than I did doing the things suddenly much lower on my list of priorities, like sleeping and eating meals. Down the stretch, I inevitably neglected friends and family in my life. And I admittedly have little idea about what’s been happening in the world outside of the triangle between D’Agostino Hall, Vanderbilt Law Library, and the Belgium Waffles coffee shop on 3rd Street that refilled my IV drip with caffeine every so often.
5. …but the camaraderie helped.
It was comforting to have classmates going through the same thing as the workload intensified. I appreciated being surrounded by people who were just as busy as I was, if only so I felt less horrible about spending a Friday night struggling to teach myself Civil Procedure. Having said that, I knew things were bad when I found myself silently nodding “Hello” to suddenly familiar faces around the library, despite the fact I had never seen many of them outside of the building.
6. It feels good to be done.
And that is the understatement of the year. At times it was difficult to remind myself that there was an end to the madness as I went through the motions of preparing for and taking exams. But upon finishing my last one, I did not feel the instant elation I had expected. After emerging from three hours of furious typing I was more frazzled than anything; it took me a few hours to decompress. It did not hit me that I was actually done until I woke up the next morning without a full day of craning my neck over my books ahead of me, without any assignments to stay on top off, and without any more exams looming. The moment almost made the struggle feel worth it… almost.
Many congratulations to all of my fellow first-year students for making it through the fall semester. It began with an earthquake, and there were definitely a few rough patches along the way. But as far as I know, all of us survived. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to go into hibernation for three weeks. See you next semester.
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