I can tell who reads the blog, where they come from, and what they were searching for when they find it. The web is an amazing thing, but we should all be aware of how much our behaviour is monitored by sources we might not even understand.
One of the search terms that enabled somebody out there to find this blog today was “i’m going to fail law school.” I don’t know how the heck my blog managed to rank for that search term, but it did. However, I’m not very interested in why somebody found this blog using those search terms. What I am interested in is that somebody must have been feeling a lot of pain when they typed those terms into a search engine.
I imagine that this person was not feeling too good about life. I imagine that this person was wondering why they even chose law school in the first place I remember what those feelings were like – I am not too far outside of those days. I remember how scary it was. I remember how I thought that I wasn’t meant to be a lawyer during my first year of law school. I remember it was really, really hard.
My first year of law school was an awful experience. I wanted badly to be a good student and do well. I was reading the case law, I was participating in class, I was trying to stay on-top of things. I thought I was doing ok. Then, I took my finals and I did horrible. I got almost straight C’s my first semester of law school. I was devastated.
The problem I had with law school at the beginning is that I approached it like I did my undergraduate education. I thought I could just regurgitate the things I read and I would be ok. However, I found out that I needed to be a little more analytical and active in my dissecting of case law and writing an great IRAC approved answer. I also needed to grow up a little.
The point is that I didn’t do very well my first year and I really needed to change things: my study habits, my attitutude, and my understanding of what I was reading. I kept at it. I became tenatious about learning. I began to be more competitive. I slowly became more analytical. I learned how to dissect things. Eventually, I became a good law student and learned how to “think like a lawyer.” It was hard, but I did it.
So, if the student who got to this silly blog and is wondering what to do with his or her life because “they are going to fail law school”, I want them to know that many people had a difficult time with law school. It isn’t easy. You are not alone. If you want to quit, fine, do it sooner rather than later. If you don’t want to quit, get tenacious. Start hustling.
For me, surviving law school is a lot like starting a law firm. I am doing it because I have a drive to keep going and win even though it’s tough and I am sometimes afraid I’m not going to make it.