Well, it has definitely been quite sometime since I have actually posted anything on this poor blog. Of course there have been plenty of intervening classes and events that I have had the opportunity to participate in. Thus, I am going to do a "small" catch-up post and try and get back into the habit of posting here.
To begin with, when I last posted it was the middle of the fall semester of my 1L year. I was probably up to my shoulders in Contracts, Criminal Law, Property, Torts, and Legal Analysis Research and Writing. Needless to say things sure did not slow down that semester. Most of my classes had midterms (a rarity in law school). The only class I did not have a midterm in was Torts, actually. I ended the semester with one memo to hand in, an eight hour take home final, and three in-class exams that lasted anywhere from three to four hours. By the time this semester was over I was definitely ready to take a break and fortunately Christmas break was longer than the ones I had in undergrad.
I spent most of my break celebrating with family but I also spent plenty of time agonizing over what my grades would be. Unfortunately I would not get my grades back until after my spring semester had begun. For the most part my grades did not disappoint, although I could have really done without the poor Property grade.
My spring semester ushered in a few new classes and a few classes I wished had ended already. On the schedule this semester Contracts and Legal Analysis Research and Writing were joined by Civil Procedure I, Criminal Procedure I, and Constitutional Law. Lets just say if it was not for the extra curricular activities that I participated in I would have likely had a tougher time deciding to come back after this semester.
Contracts was a difficult class due to my instructor having a heart attack around the second week of class which threw off the schedule for the rest of the semester and left me failing to understand the Parole Evidence Rule as well as I probably should have. My writing class focused on writing the appellate brief this semester which was supposed to be persuasive and should have been more entertaining but by the end of the semester I was disenchanted with law school grading as a whole, and most of that frustration came from this class. I'll discuss that in more detail though in a later post.
The other classes were not necessarily bad but they were also not necessarily good either. Constitutional Law was rather boring and it really only dealt with the commerce clause, although my instructor spent most of class lecturing us on the various supreme court justices and their quirks as opposed to actual constitutional law... Criminal Procedure should have been named Constitutional Considerations in Criminal Law because the class was light on procedure and heavy on fourth and fifth amendment content. Civil Procedure on the other hand was actually interesting because it started to elucidate the actual process of filing a court case, which is kind of why I came to law school in the first place.
As I said I would probably not have chosen to return for another two years of law school if it was not for the extra circular activities I participated in. This semester we had the opportunity to visit the local sheriff's office, the morgue, and the county jail. Since I am primarily interested in criminal law this gave me the opportunity to see the system I would work in and hopefully have a chance to influence when I complete my degree.
I also had the opportunity to volunteer to be a juror for our Intensive Trial Advocacy Program (ITAP) which is a quick two week course designed to get 2Ls familiar with the basics of how court proceedings work. This combined with the oral argument I had to give in defense of my appellate brief gave me a glimmer of hope that I will actually enjoy law school and being a lawyer someday.
My final grades from the Spring semester definitely left something to be desired but I am not going to let one semester where I allowed myself to get distracted and discouraged by the course content (or lack there of sometimes) get me down. I am currently taking a few summer classes which I will discuss in a future post and I have decided to keep a decent balance between my school and personal life so that I do not lose sight of the reasons why I am going to law school to begin with (my family).
Thus, now that I am back I will hopefully continue to post with more regularity. I already have a few upcoming posts in mind. I have also decided that I am not going to focus so much on tips and tricks for law school but rather I am just going to share my experiences in and out of the classroom. Some posts will probably be devoted to strictly law school stuff but I am also going to toss in a few posts about the things I am doing to maintain the balance between law school and "life." I hope those of you who are already here will stick with me and I hope that at least some of my future readers will find my posts worth reading and stick around!
