How does it feel? (like a rolling stone)

[Please see my original post here.]

My subjective sense of what law school feels like, on the morning of the fourth day:

I'm being shoved from the rear and I can't pause for the stampede behind me. All that's left for me to do is raise my elbows and muscle my way to the edge of the crowd. The work--reading, case briefing, studying, thinking, preparing for cold-calls in class--is pressuring me from the back and if I stop for even a moment it threatens to overtake and pass me. In law school, I know, one cannot afford to fall behind.


So: my schedule from Wednesday, the third day of class, is below. Know that my contracts prof. is my scariest professor and the one for whom I most want to be prepared.

• 3:18 am: Wide awake and nearly panicking about all the work I have to do before class



• 3:20-6 am: Contracts prep



• Shower



• 6:20-8:20: Contracts prep



• 8:21: sew hem in pants



• 8:30: print contracts brief



• 8:35: leave for school



• 9:15: review Crim. Law readings and brief



• 10:00-10:50: Criminal Law



• 10:50-11:00 Go over Criminal Law notes and create a sweat sheet*



• 12:00-12:50: Contracts



• 12:51-1:00: Begin Contracts sweat sheet



• 1:-1:50: Torts



• 1:50-2:20: finish Contracts sweat sheet



• 2:20-3:45: Crim. Law reading and case brief



• 3:45-5:20: Property reading and 3 case briefs



• 5:20: print out case briefs



• 5:40: head for home



• 5:40-6:20: (on train) read ch. 30, Civil Procedure



• 6:20-6:45: eat dinner while continuing to read Civ. Pro. assignment



• 6:45-7:20: continue with Civ. Pro. reading



• 7:20-9:45: Contracts case brief



• 9:45-10:15: go over Contracts sweat sheet and define any terms that are confusing (Black's Legal Dictionary)



• 10:15-10:40: read ch. 5 for Legal Practice Skills



• 10:40 fall asleep with lights on and book open to chapter 5, page 3.

That's right; I worked straight through from 3:20 am to 10:40 pm and I still didn't get enough done. Also I don't feel prepared for Contracts and plan to do more prep work before class on Friday. I'm beginning to thrash and lose my bearings. Please remember that I'm writing this on the morning of my fourth day of school.

I prefer not to be trampled.



*sweat sheet: I take notes in class on the front side of the paper. After class the back side of each page is empty. This is where I create my sweat sheet. I go over the notes from class and pull out the salient points along with any terms I need to look up later. From the book "1000 Days to the Bar--But the Practice of Law Begins Now," by Dennis J. Tonsing: "These are the pages over which students toil and sweat. accordingly, the learning experts at Landmark College (Putney, Vermont) have aptly nicknamed these 'sweat pages.'"

Can you IMAGINE?

Really? Law?
I, too, can hardly believe it.

If you had asked me four years ago, or even two years ago, I never would've answered "law school." No, up until a year and a half ago I was planning to study painting in graduate school. Useless degrees be damned!

Then I started to look at my past, which led me to thinking about my future. My list of jobs since graduating college with a BFA in painting and drawing include:

• office temp
• college bookstore temp (Colorado State University)
  
• Home Depot customer service associate
• art and frame store cashier and custom framing designer
• college bookstore temp (Northeastern University)
• college bookstore temp/cashier (MIT Coop)
• support staff at the MIT Libraries

In six years I've worked at over half a dozen jobs and none of them paid me enough to maintain a decent savings account. Only the library job was at times intellectually challenging. At only one of them did I spend more than a year (my library job--three and a half years and counting).

So then I started to think about my future and deducted that with an M.F.A. in painting I would be setting myself up for more of the same. I started thinking about preparing for a career, which, I suppose, was a big step toward growing up.

I studied for the LSAT (do it; buy a book and spend at least a couple of months preparing for the test. You DO NOT want to have to take it again). I took the LSAT; I passed the LSAT; I applied to some schools; I was accepted; I won two full-tuition scholarships; I paid my deposit to Suffolk University; I registered for classes.

Now here I am, preparing to buy my books and pose for my ID photo. I have a class schedule and student health insurance (oh, beautiful liberal Massachusetts, your health insurance reform makes my heart go all pitter-pattery).

I'm excited and scared and thrilled and petrified. I have a sense that law school is going to be harder than I can even imagine (see my previous post) but I'm looking forward to the adventure. I just wish some compassionate law student out there would tell me what it's really going to be like.
Anyone?

Ending

My last day at work is less than three weeks away. I'm glad for the upcoming chance to reinvent myself, where no one knows my clothing style (easily changed); where no one has seen me wear sneakers every day (I've bought half a dozen new shoes); where no one has seen tiny wrinkles settle in my face (I am over thirty); in a place where no one knows my work history or my struggles in life or on the job (new struggles await). This leaving is also sad around the edges. I've drifted away from most of my peers at work, both physically and emotionally. My job duties at the MIT Libraries shifted in the past year so that I'm mostly alone most days. I rarely speak to my coworkers and I see them even less. They have lives that I'll never know about and in two and a half weeks I'll say goodbye to them for what may be the last time. How much more could they have taught me if I'd stuck around for longer, if I'd taken a chance and gotten closer?

Yet. My position at the library, and the positions of my coworkers, haven't historically been long-term. Among the five of us I'm the most senior, and I'll be leaving after less than four years at the job. (My boss has referred to my going to law school this way: "You're growing up.") The benefits are great but the pay is relatively low and the job's monotony is only infrequently punctuated by brief moments of challenge. It's mostly the same every week; every day; every hour. This is especially true when one's days are spent working alone. The dullness is caustic.

Yet. In two and a half weeks I'll sit at my desk for the last time. I'll turn off my computer for the last time. I'll say goodbye for the last time. Endings are wrenching.

Woot Woot

Today I got my class assignment for Fall '09. Woo HOO! I'm exceedingly excited. My schedule? M, W, TR 10am-3:50pm. T, F 11am-3:50 pm. Law school ROCKS.

Suffolk University's first year law curriculum is nearly identical to that of nearly every American law school.
1L:

• Civil Procedure
• Constitutional Law
  
• Contracts
• Criminal Law
• Legal Practice Skills
• Property
• Torts
  

Note: admins arrange schedules to accommodate lots of out-of-class work time.