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on studying and pressure
Jul. 27th, 2008 02:17 pmit's weird. i feel a nagging obligation to study, but that's about it. it's no longer the wild, irresistible compulsion to study that i felt before. last week, i was freaking out, and there was so much more knowledge that needed to be shoved in my head.
last week there was space for it.
this week? i don't feel like there is anymore. do i know every single rule? of course not. who can? maybe some supersmart person with a large mental capacity, but i'm not her.
but, am i acquitting myself well at my practice questions? yes.
the pressure i feel to keep studying makes me think about the pressure to study that pervaded law school: do it because everyone else is. i was able to keep those impulses effectively at bay throughout all of law school. law school was full of so much pressure to study all night and keep your social life at bay because This Time It Mattered. but, in retrospect...it was a lot like undergrad. sure, there was a little more preparation necessary around finals than was ever needed in undergrad. it was a different kind of reading, it was a different kind of knowledge that was necessary to pass the exams. but, when all was said and done, it was the same old same old...it was school. it was all hypothetical, and meaningless except for that little piece of paper i was going to get at the end that would let me take the bar and try and become a lawyer.
the major difference between undergrad and law school was the feeling of competition. in undergrad, there wasn't any. there was no class rank, no pressure stemming from the fact that every single person in the class was trying to get the same few jobs. everyone did their own thing, minded their own business, put what they wanted to put into their classes, and that was the end of the story. no one was scratching and clawing to be number one in the class, or to desperately steal that coveted job opportunity from under the noses of twenty deserving classmates.
law school was all about competition. competition was the pervasive ethic...everyone was freaking out about being in the top third, or the top ten percent, or the top whatever. large groups of students jockeyed for the same jobs, and believed that grades were what were going to differentiate them. sometimes that belief was correct, sometimes that belief was unfounded.
i bought into it at first. it was a knee-jerk reaction. the last time i had been in such a circumstance was high school, when class ranks were posted on the windows by the guidance offices, and everyone in the upper-level classes was jockeying for that #1 spot. i was still a little bitter...i had that #1 spot throughout almost all of high school, until some girl who took a ton of classes at the local college her junior and senior year used that extra credit to snipe that position from under my nose. i was indignant--i hadn't even made any Bs in my classes, she just had more AP credits than i did. that was all. i thought i had finally realised that didn't matter, but as soon as i realised that law school was going to be another round of that game, i was back with a vengeance. i spent that first semester of law school reading every page, briefing every case, and [except for my friday and saturday nights, which have always been almost sacredly my own] becoming a law school automaton.
finals week came. then, eventually, grades came. it was then that i found the error of my ways.
the grades felt completely random. i did fantastically on the test that literally had me crying on the floor after i took it, and i got a thoroughly mediocre grade in a class i thought i had done astronomically well in. all in all the average was good, but that wasn't helping me get a job, and it didn't feel worth the sacrifices i had made, spending so many nights in, on my couch, briefing all of the minutiae.
it was time for a reassessment. i didn't stop studying altogether...just mostly. i put enough into it to stay apprised with what was going on in class, hold up my end of a conversation if the professor decided to grill me, and do well enough on the finals that hopefully second-year interviewing wouldn't be quite so demoralizing as first-year.
for what effort i was putting into law school that first semester, i wasn't getting nearly enough out of it to justify all that time. it wasn't worth curtailing my social life, and it wasn't worth curtailing my time to relax, regain my sanity, and enjoy things that had nothing to do with the law. that goal of reclaiming that class rank i had lost so long ago in high school was a ridiculous idea, and completely irrelevant. i wasn't sixteen anymore...i was twenty-three. i had proven myself decently intelligent, and had no need to "avenge" anything. once i got that monkey off my back, i could see things more clearly, and i knew exactly what i had to do. to most law students, "time management" meant cutting out "extraneous" entertainments in order to make more time to study. to me, it meant the opposite. my entertainment, my pleasure was by no means extraneous, and as much as i loved [and still love] the law, i have always identified at least as strongly, if not more strongly, with things i choose to do in my free time than with whatever becomes my "day job" at any given point.
i realised, once i let go of the absurd kind of pressure that i was putting on myself, that heavy pressure to make law school my entire life had been coming from all directions: the demands of the professors, the admonitions of administration, and the culture of the students. it was pervasive, and intimately linked to competition. you either had to be studying all the time, or at least give people the impression that you were studying all the time, or else you were not taking law school or your career or your future seriously enough, and were an affront to the great institution of the law. it's a dangerous environment. it leads people to take that same mindset into the workplace with them, and risk becoming completely subsumed by their jobs. that's already a huge problem in the legal profession, and something tells me that if law students weren't constantly being mentally primed to sacrifice the pursuit of happiness in favour of a study carrel in law school, there's a possibility that these students, once lawyers, would be better equipped to balance their work life and their real life once they were out of law school.
last week there was space for it.
this week? i don't feel like there is anymore. do i know every single rule? of course not. who can? maybe some supersmart person with a large mental capacity, but i'm not her.
but, am i acquitting myself well at my practice questions? yes.
the pressure i feel to keep studying makes me think about the pressure to study that pervaded law school: do it because everyone else is. i was able to keep those impulses effectively at bay throughout all of law school. law school was full of so much pressure to study all night and keep your social life at bay because This Time It Mattered. but, in retrospect...it was a lot like undergrad. sure, there was a little more preparation necessary around finals than was ever needed in undergrad. it was a different kind of reading, it was a different kind of knowledge that was necessary to pass the exams. but, when all was said and done, it was the same old same old...it was school. it was all hypothetical, and meaningless except for that little piece of paper i was going to get at the end that would let me take the bar and try and become a lawyer.
the major difference between undergrad and law school was the feeling of competition. in undergrad, there wasn't any. there was no class rank, no pressure stemming from the fact that every single person in the class was trying to get the same few jobs. everyone did their own thing, minded their own business, put what they wanted to put into their classes, and that was the end of the story. no one was scratching and clawing to be number one in the class, or to desperately steal that coveted job opportunity from under the noses of twenty deserving classmates.
law school was all about competition. competition was the pervasive ethic...everyone was freaking out about being in the top third, or the top ten percent, or the top whatever. large groups of students jockeyed for the same jobs, and believed that grades were what were going to differentiate them. sometimes that belief was correct, sometimes that belief was unfounded.
i bought into it at first. it was a knee-jerk reaction. the last time i had been in such a circumstance was high school, when class ranks were posted on the windows by the guidance offices, and everyone in the upper-level classes was jockeying for that #1 spot. i was still a little bitter...i had that #1 spot throughout almost all of high school, until some girl who took a ton of classes at the local college her junior and senior year used that extra credit to snipe that position from under my nose. i was indignant--i hadn't even made any Bs in my classes, she just had more AP credits than i did. that was all. i thought i had finally realised that didn't matter, but as soon as i realised that law school was going to be another round of that game, i was back with a vengeance. i spent that first semester of law school reading every page, briefing every case, and [except for my friday and saturday nights, which have always been almost sacredly my own] becoming a law school automaton.
finals week came. then, eventually, grades came. it was then that i found the error of my ways.
the grades felt completely random. i did fantastically on the test that literally had me crying on the floor after i took it, and i got a thoroughly mediocre grade in a class i thought i had done astronomically well in. all in all the average was good, but that wasn't helping me get a job, and it didn't feel worth the sacrifices i had made, spending so many nights in, on my couch, briefing all of the minutiae.
it was time for a reassessment. i didn't stop studying altogether...just mostly. i put enough into it to stay apprised with what was going on in class, hold up my end of a conversation if the professor decided to grill me, and do well enough on the finals that hopefully second-year interviewing wouldn't be quite so demoralizing as first-year.
for what effort i was putting into law school that first semester, i wasn't getting nearly enough out of it to justify all that time. it wasn't worth curtailing my social life, and it wasn't worth curtailing my time to relax, regain my sanity, and enjoy things that had nothing to do with the law. that goal of reclaiming that class rank i had lost so long ago in high school was a ridiculous idea, and completely irrelevant. i wasn't sixteen anymore...i was twenty-three. i had proven myself decently intelligent, and had no need to "avenge" anything. once i got that monkey off my back, i could see things more clearly, and i knew exactly what i had to do. to most law students, "time management" meant cutting out "extraneous" entertainments in order to make more time to study. to me, it meant the opposite. my entertainment, my pleasure was by no means extraneous, and as much as i loved [and still love] the law, i have always identified at least as strongly, if not more strongly, with things i choose to do in my free time than with whatever becomes my "day job" at any given point.
i realised, once i let go of the absurd kind of pressure that i was putting on myself, that heavy pressure to make law school my entire life had been coming from all directions: the demands of the professors, the admonitions of administration, and the culture of the students. it was pervasive, and intimately linked to competition. you either had to be studying all the time, or at least give people the impression that you were studying all the time, or else you were not taking law school or your career or your future seriously enough, and were an affront to the great institution of the law. it's a dangerous environment. it leads people to take that same mindset into the workplace with them, and risk becoming completely subsumed by their jobs. that's already a huge problem in the legal profession, and something tells me that if law students weren't constantly being mentally primed to sacrifice the pursuit of happiness in favour of a study carrel in law school, there's a possibility that these students, once lawyers, would be better equipped to balance their work life and their real life once they were out of law school.
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