My finals routine has been more or less the same since my first semester and today was no different.
I woke up early, made some eggs (it used to be hard-boiled, but now I'm willing to go through the trouble of doing them scrambled because I like them better that way). I usually re-read my outline on the bus or before the test starts, but considering that I finished writing it eight hours prior, I went straight to the part where I set out everything on the table.
Even though I've never once used it during a final, I always bring my textbook. Assuming everything else completely fails, I suppose I could just start at the beginning and hope to find the answers toward the beginning.
I went to get my exam and plugged away. It seemed straightforward enough and I had just enough time to notice I had slightly misread one theory question and fix it. As per usual, I don't remember most of what I wrote and I can't tell if it's a sure-thing A or a thanks-for-playing B. I reminded myself of what Cella says: "Bs get degrees."
If this were a movie, I'd stop and reflect upon handing in the Last Exam Of My Academic Career Ever Unless I Decide To Get An MBA For No Reason. But I had somewhere to be soon and I split.
But let's roll with the movie thing. The reflection would dissolve into a flashback to Oak Street Beach, August 2005. I sat on a beach towel. A couple of other pre-1Ls sit nearby discussing how bad it could possibly to swim in Lake Michigan. I was reading Law School Confidential, which is only good for thoughtfully giving to people you know would be awful in law school but can't be convinced that they shouldn't apply.
There I was, sunscreen on, sitting on a beach between a highway and a lake that looked like an ocean, reading a book telling me to block16-hour days into little pieces, including nice little slivers for relaxation and exercise.
"This is how they run prisons," it would have been poignant of me to have said just then.
I tabbed off the page explaining how to use six highlighters when reading cases. First of all, highlighters usually come in packs of 5, which means you have to hope the missing color is sold individually, which they usually aren't. Second of all, using six highlighters and taking copious notes in the margins are two reasons why a 15 minute assignment for a 3L takes an hour and a half for a 1L and they both end up with the same grade. The marginal benefit of any of these self-aware study habits is next to nothing.
Later that day, we went out, drank and perhaps ate wings. About a dozen of us with nothing to do and few other friends in town spent the two weeks before orientation tearing up the town like sailors about to spend months at sea, bonding like we would be too harried and to ever make any other friends and generally treating the situation like we were all Queen Latifah in Last Holiday, although that film had not yet been released. People expressed a little worry, but mostly excitement for the next three years. They surely knew about the highlighters, but it wasn't on anyone's mind.
I didn't know any of this and I doubt hearing a 3L tell me that there's nothing that special about law school. If you have good reading comprehension, it's just about learning what you need to read for, something no number of highlighters can help you with. Math always struck me as far less intuitive.
It makes sense that my last exam came and went almost exactly like every other and merited little sentimentality once it was done. I've come to realize that you don't succeed in law school by treating it like basic training. I tried it for a month, didn't like it and managed to do quite well, thankyouverymuch.
The trite end to this story would be to prattle on about "work-life balance" like every single BigLaw recruiter out there. Truth is, sometimes you have to fall out of balance. For three straight weeks this January and February, I spent night after night and most of the weekends working on a clinic assignment I couldn't figure out, throwing out reams of Westlaw printouts as I went down one blind alley after another. I showed up at the library before it opened to work on my casenote as a 2L. I've also driven out to Ames, Iowa on a Wednesday to watch a basketball game and drink quarter beers with townies. Before the library opened one Saturday last fall, I was drinking gin and tonic from a Nalgene on my way to watch a football game. You don't want to know what a party at my apartment is like.
When you're really, really busy, life gets utterly miserable, no matter how well you plan. Don't "reward yourself," since rewards just encourage more of the behavior that led up to them. When I was at the absolute end of my fraying rope, I like to know that I occasionally took my life back from the law school and that I could do it again if I wanted to.
Let's put it this way: if you want to do something really dumb, really juvenile or just really random, go and do it. Having a paper due the next day is an excuse; having "a lot of reading" is not. Check your email now and then, bring along a book to make yourself feel better and you'll be fine.
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