During my 1L spring semester, an email advertising Academic Success Program Director Nina Farber’s Productivity Labs caught my attention. Thinking to myself, “who wouldn’t want to be more productive,” I filled out the sheet and awaited the results. Thankfully, I was accepted, and over the course of the next few weeks, I met once a week with Nina, alongside several other students, learning strategies catered towards studying, meditating, and test taking. One lesson of the program that has remained in my arsenal of tactics against unproductivity is breathing, particularly breathwork.
Continue readingmental health
Seven Miles, Four Left Turns, and One Very Bad Idea
Over Fall Break this past October, I went for my first outdoor run in Randolph.
It was also the first time in my life that I ended up on crutches.
Continue readingThe Opportunity Cost of Early BigLaw Recruiting
It’s your first semester of law school at BC Law. It’s been just a few weeks since orientation, and you’re trying to get your footing. Torts makes sense, because slapping someone is obviously a battery. Contracts feels manageable too; you think about your apartment lease, or your brother’s offer to buy you McDonald’s, to think through offer and acceptance. Law Practice is a bit frustrating because you’re expected to learn the Bluebook on the fly. And Civ Pro? You have no idea what’s going on there—but that’s a problem for later.
Meanwhile, you’re figuring out how to be a law student. Do you take notes like you did in undergrad, buy color-coded notebooks to handwrite in class, or type a near-transcript of everything your professor says? When do you start outlining—and what even is an outline? Will you sound stupid if you go to office hours to ask about Twombly? And then there’s the club fair. Should you apply to that 1L Representative position for the Law Student Association? Or for the Business Law Society? Both would look great on your resume. But not too many commitments so soon—you still need time to read your cases, pour hours into over-detailed briefs, and prepare for class. Maybe one club application and casual involvement in the others will be enough for now.
Continue readingFour Tips for Navigating Grade Disappointment
Once again I am directly addressing the 1L class, and also airing out my dirty laundry. Everything I write below—like all my Impact posts—is what I wish someone could have told me before coming to school. As always, all opinions and experiences are my own, as I can only speak to what I endured during my 1L year.
“Endure” will be the theme here. It’s a strong word I typically find only in my romantasy books. Merriam-Webster tells us it means “to remain firm under suffering or misfortune without yielding.” Very dramatic. But to say a student endures his or her 1L year does not fail to satisfy Merriam-Webster’s definition. Some of you may feel like you’re hanging by a thread, trying to go through the motions of law school one day at a time. You are enduring.
Continue readingRealistic Resolutions for a 1L (That I Might Actually Keep)
By January of 1L year, the idea of a “New Year’s resolution” feels ambitious at best and slightly delusional at worst. After surviving fall finals and learning, the hard way, what doesn’t work, I’m setting a few resolutions for second semester. Nothing revolutionary, just realistic enough that I might actually end up doing them.
Continue readingEscaping the 2L Doldrums (A Tortured Sailing Metaphor)
“Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion:
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.”
‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (1834)
Growing up in southeastern Pennsylvania, I remember learning about the so-called ‘age of exploration’, probably an aged moniker today, but hey, this was *gasp* the late-90s. One thing that stuck with me from all those lessons about Christopher Columbus’s supposed ‘discovery’ of the new world, Ferdinand Magellan’s unceremonious demise in Southeast Asia, and Henry Hudson’s ill-fated attempt(s) to uncover a waterway that linked the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and so on, is a rather minor aspect of wind-based sea travel: getting stuck in the doldrums.
Continue readingThe Hardest Part of 1L (It’s Not the Readings)
Arriving at BC Law this past August brought a rush of excitement. I’d known I wanted to be a lawyer all of my life, and had been building toward this step for just as long. After growing up on crime- and law-themed TV shows like Law & Order, I completed two legal internships in college, wrote my senior honors thesis on a legal topic, and worked at a personal injury law firm for two years after graduation. So when I was admitted to the so-called “Disneyland of Law Schools,” it was an answered prayer—like a dream come true.
Continue readingThree Tips for Success With Finals
To everyone else, after Halloween marks the start of winter and the holiday season.
But in the law school world, sorry to say…it means we’re gearing up towards finals. Whether this is your first law school finals season or your fifth, here are some tips for success for finals preparation AND well-being these next few weeks.
Continue readingCold Calling Is Good, Actually
“I know fear is an obstacle for some people, but it is an illusion to me. Failure always made me try harder next time.” – Michael Jordan
One of the (many) things that causes law students the most angst is the dreaded cold call. The fear is so pronounced that before I even attended a single 1L class, BC Law had shown me the famous cold calling scene from Legally Blonde multiple times. I understand why cold calling induces anxiety, especially in your early days of law school when you have likely never experienced it in other classroom settings. To be clear, this post should not be taken to suggest that cold calling does not make me nervous or that I never get a cold call embarrassingly wrong (I definitely do). But getting things wrong is kind of the point of learning and law school; otherwise, we’d be practicing attorneys already.
Continue readingThe Case for Doing Less
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” ― Ferris Bueller
In the throes of 1L year, while dealing with difficult material, a new learning environment, networking events, and perhaps feeling completely overwhelmed and lost, a law student is likely to hear a common refrain. It often goes something like, “I know this is rough, 1L is so tough, but it gets so much better in 2L.” And like most aphorisms, it contains a nugget of truth. In many ways, the law school experience changes fundamentally between your first year and your second. The classroom experience becomes less intimidating and more familiar. You can choose your own class schedule and have agency over the areas of law you wish to study. Even more importantly, for some, you have the chance to partake in experiential learning opportunities, such as clinics and externships, which are not available to 1Ls.
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