Friday 17 September 2010

What to expect in Law School?

After the initial excitement and surprise at being accepted (even though I spent hours preparing my applications and for the lsat, I still expected more hurdles), I started thinking about what it will be like.

Classes. Lectures. Homework. Although it is a postgraduate degree, the average or median age is young. Many of the students would be entering straight from an undergraduate course. Will I be able to keep up? I did a Computer Science degree, I've never written a real, significant essay in my life. I am not sure if my brain will cope with essays and case briefs. I worry a little about fitting in, I will be 27 when the course starts, but I console myself with the fact that I look young. Maybe not 21 young, but I don't think that I will stand out too much. Right? Right?


Actually what I worry about isn't so much the age thing, but the culture thing. Law students, have a reputation for being competitive, self-centred elitists, especially those at the highly regarded universities. Certainly, some of the forums and responses to threads I've found on the internet does nothing to dispel those notions. The obsession some have with the Big 4 law firms... There seems to be trouble in some quarters with comprehending that some people are not in it for the money, and have absolutely no interest in doing the law practised by those firms. Definitely, I will be going into next year with the mindset that I am on my own.


I've been obsessing with note-taking methods and strategies. Should I type or handwrite? This wasn't a question back in my Uni days, as having a laptop was still relatively unusual. Computer Science involved a fair bit of diagramming and the computer labs were never far away. But the biggest factor was the fact that we had the lecture notes/slides as a book for most of the subjects, so writing notes by hand in it was just the logical thing.

No comments:

Post a Comment