Ode to Sleep

Oh, sleep, how I miss you. Gone are the days when I took you for granted. Now you are a luxury I enjoy on the weekends.

Big surprise, law students often get less sleep than they should. The requirements and lifestyle of law school are not conducive to sleeping. Coming into law school, you might think the load isn't so bad. Oh, 15-20 pages a night for each of your 3-4 classes, that's nothing. Well, think again. The reality of it is that those 15-20 pages can take 2 or 3 or more hours to read. No, this is not because I have a reading deficiency and am on hooked on phonics or anything like that. In college you may have been able to skim or just read through the material and be fine. In law school that's just not good enough. Who said what in paragraph 3? What was this random detail on p. 476? After you figure all of that out you get to synthesize & analyze the material and brief the case, figuring out the issue, rule, analysis, etc. from Case A and then Case B and then the rule gleaned from the cases combined. Oh then outside of the reading, you are likely to have a number of rules that you get to break down into their elements and you need to know every word and how to apply the these rules to complex factual situations. Anyway, that's why it takes soooooo long.

Even after all of that you may not feel super prepared if you're called on to participate in the joy that is the Socratic Method. You think you have a handle on the material, but then your professor throws a curve ball at you--What was so and so really talking about? What policy reasons persuaded the judges (not in the case)? Based on this case, how would you answer this hypo that is similar but has nuances to the rule that are complex and confusing? Distinguish this case with a case you read 3 weeks ago.  Ahhhhhhh! It's enough to drive some law students nuts if you really think about it. (Oh and you will hear horror stories about people going nuts in law school. Generally about them flipping out around finals time.)

Anyway, the sick thing is that law school is a lot of fun (though not all law students feel this way). It may be a pain a lot of the time but it really is a lot of fun. You spend all day reading interesting cases (ok, they aren't always so interesting, but a lot of the time they are) and rules can actually be fun to learn the more you understand them.

So, as you can see law students have a love-hate relationship with law school. On days I'm really feeling the hate, usually around exam time, I watch a certain video on YouTube--Law School Musical. This video was put together by another jaded, tired, and frazzled law student. It's funny but oh so true, and it lets you know that you aren't alone. This video always makes me feel better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8ABhatAfsA