My first...
I watch it begin again
Thank you!
Before I start, I’ve got to say thank you. Within days of my first newsletter post, we got over 100 members! While I love posting on TikTok, it’s always been my dream to make long-form content and build deeper bonds with you. Thank you for caring about anything I have to say.
You’re swimming in a beautiful ocean.
The sun is shining and your mind is quiet. You start getting tired, your body sore from the paddling. You open your eyes and find you’re far from the shore. You’re alone. It dawns on you that waves are rolling in and you’re losing steam. You start paddling back, but it’s hard working against the current, and the voice in your head begs you to lift your head and take a breath. Somehow, you’re making it back.
I’m not a strong swimmer, and maybe those of you who are can’t relate to the story above. Instead of avoiding the ocean, I let myself forget I can barely swim and experience it instead. Mostly, it’s fine. Sometimes, the dreamscape shatters.
These last few weeks, nothing around me has changed. The campus is beautiful, the people are great, and the never-ending social events keep me so entertained, that I lose sight of what’s happening internally. I’m losing steam.
This newsletter is framed around my “firsts” in law school, but I hope you can see, this is what it looks like when you don’t listen to yourself. I can imagine many of you may be experiencing it right now — whether you’re working, in school, or both.
Bar Review
In the words of one of my professors, part of the law school education is teaching you how to sociable and well-adjusted person. Whatever the reason for the time-honored tradition of Bar Review, Penn can throw a good party.
Assignment
Up until now, all our assignments have been readings, with the threat of cold-calling as an accountability measure. Maybe that’s why our first assignment for LPS felt like such a big deal.
Legal writing: A mandatory class for 1Ls. At Penn, it’s called legal practice skills (LPS). While doctrinal classes (torts, civil procedure, contracts) teach you case law, LPS teaches you practical skills, like drafting memos and analyzing case law. While LPS is pass/fail/honors, for students with lofty goals, such as legal academia or clerkships, this may be the class you care about the most.
Our first assignment was analyzing whether our client in a mock murder case could successfully file a motion to suppress. In LPS, I’ve learned that legal writing is comparing the facts of a past case with yours and using the judge’s reasoning to decide your case.
motion to suppress: If you say something you shouldn’t have said to an officer under custodial interrogation AND you haven’t been given your Miranda warnings, those statements can be tossed out. If your lawyer files a motion to suppress, and it’s successful, whatever you said won’t be held against you in a courtroom.
I loved writing the memo more than I expected to. I love how you can take the same set of facts someone else is working with and spin it the complete opposite way, so long as you reason it out well. Our professor is amazing and this class is a reprieve from reading about cases that happened decades before I was born (not to discount my doctrinal classes and history as a whole, but I do enjoy the break).
Medical School Visit
I am 99% sure I’m going to add on a Masters in Bioethics. Part of the reason I chose Penn in the first place was because they emphasize cross-disciplinary education. They don’t just say it like some sort of marketing ploy. The MBE adds no extra time to the three-year degree. Also, I think it’ll be a great opportunity to meet people in different disciplines.
The Perelman School of Medicine is large, highly ranked, and beautiful. The irony is not lost on me that after years of telling people I’m not pursuing medicine, I would be taking classes at a medical school after all. The event I attended was held by a lecturer who went over her experience working at the cutting edge of transplant research. It was cool, but I felt confident I chose the right profession after just seeing pictures of organs made me queasy.
Cold Call
I’m not going to sit here and tell you I haven’t lost track in a lecture. It happens often, and not even because I’m dazing off. Sometimes the professor speaks quickly with a student, goes on a side tangent, and I’m just lost. It happens to everyone.
But I got lucky. So lucky. Bright and early in my Tuesday morning Torts class, I happened to be interested in the particular case we were discussing, and when I got called on, I like to think I spoke confidently and said just enough to get the answer across. You go back and forth with the professor for a bit on the particular issue. As far as cold calls go, it could have been a lot worse, so I counted my blessings.
Leadership Position
I said I wouldn’t do it again and I did. In college, I was very involved. By senior year, I spent substantially more time working on my campus leadership positions than everything else. I mean it got me here and I’m very grateful for everything I learned, but I do want to choose wisely and be selective.
BUT, I am a creature of habit. I joined the Council of Student Representatives, essentially student government, as a 1L representative. If you are passionate about leadership and improving student life, I highly recommend joining your CSR when you get to law school.
Sleepless nights
There’s a reason why I strongly believe, along with every medical expert out there, that eight hours of sleep is necessary. Eight and a half if you have anxiety. Being in law school doesn’t change that. I let myself go a day, then two, then four nights.
Four nights getting ~ four hours of sleep. I kept fighting with myself. Here’s how that sounds:
Another cup of coffee means another assignment checked off the list. If I can just make it to the weekend, I can catch up on sleep and relax then. Getting this done now means I’m a more disciplined person. This is just part of the law school experience. My body will get used to it.
By Thursday night, I did catch up on my work! Because I got sick and had to go home early Thursday and skip bar review. By the weekend I did relax! Because I couldn’t get out of bed.
Sickness
Getting sick was a blessing. There are two ways to look at everything, and I’m choosing to stick with that narrative.
Cons:
I’ve never been sick and lived by myself. It’s awful.
I made pretty horrible chicken noodle soup.
My apartment got messy.
My weekend plans turned into isolation.
Pro:
“Me” time. No socializing.
Tea and sleep.
Watched TV, guilt-free.
Caught up on all my assignments.
I hate sending out an email to professors saying I’m taking a sick day, but I did it! If you’re reading this and anything like me (sick, anxious), please just call in a sick day. School isn’t a job, you’re not getting paid, and no one is going to be hurt by you not being there (possibly, the opposite). It sucks catching up on missed lectures, but taking a day to make sure you’re actually better is the only way to not get worse.
I don’t know when it happened. Somewhere between these “firsts”, probably. I stopped feeling like I just started law school. I’m just in law school now. I finally got my study schedule into a routine, even if my personal life and health hit the fan. But we’re learning and letting it be — we made it to week three.