It is nearly that time of year …
Christmas music is playing, snow has already appeared on the ground, the temperatures are falling, the leaves have all fallen off the trees, you are stressing about what presents you’ll have to be buying for friends and family, and if you are lucky enough to be attending law school- panic is in the air.
For myself as a 1L, I’m only panicking about half of the time, the other part I’m trying to tell everyone that, yes of course everything will be fine. But will it be? Perhaps, perhaps not. This isn’t youth soccer, not everyone gets a trophy for participating. But luckily, I think most everyone IS panicking.
The library has turned into a sort of panic zone, study groups comparing notes and trying to work through practice exams. The realization after you’ve completed a practice exam that you still have so much to do, and then the sheer panic that follows. It’s crazy to think that we’ve already gone through the whole fall semester. Even crazier to think that on Monday at 1pm we will be sitting down to our contracts final. Stressful yes, but we’ve been working all semester to get to this point. At times during preparation I find myself having fun figuring out a crazy hypothetical problem. I think that has to be the key to surviving these next few weeks of almost pure torture- remember why you came in the first place and keep finding interesting things that keep you interested in the material.
What I have seen as not being useful is just freaking out in general. It’s a waste of energy and distracts from studying. For example, I’m writing this blog instead of sitting on the couch watching tv as my study break, I do have the TV on but I’m trying to occupy myself in such a way so I don’t worry too much about the now very uncomfortably near future.
It’s one of those cases where you think finals are never going to get here, and then one day you wake up and finals are knocking on your door. Now there is no way I’m going to reinvent the wheel and figure out all of what has happened during the entire semester of any given class, all I can do is solidify what I know and try to clear up anything that I completely don’t understand. Although I’m by no means an expert on these type of things yet, in true blogging style I’ve come up with a list on how to survive finals. Or at least how to make it through finals, I’ll let you know if I actually survived at the beginning of next year.
My finals survival list:
- Don’t forget to be a human being.
- All the coffee.
- Exercise is key.
- Don’t forget to eat.
- Go to bed and wake up at a set time, don’t sacrifice your sleep- it won’t help you to take your finals with not enough sleep under your belt.
- Talk to people who aren’t in law school. There is a life outside those four walls full of knowledge.
- More coffee.
- Don’t waste time, but take time out for yourself.
- Don’t give up.
- Ask questions for clarification.
- Take practice exams.
- It’s okay to freak out a little bit.
That’s all folks. I’ve sufficiently recharged so I can now finish figuring out some future interest problems. Over and out, and may the curve be ever in your favor.
Julianna Blogs 