First Day of Classes

Well today is the official first day of classes and so far I have one class down. This weekend was spent obsessing over the law and my legal education. I spent each afternoon and evening studying diligently for the classes for this week. It seemed as if the questions never stopped coming and the words on the pages always seemed to go on and on. Looking back I am now finding it rather hard to distinguish what I read from what I dreamed and what I dreamed from what I wrote. It is going to be an interesting week, but I am thankful that I can by no means claim that I am an expert yet at studying. Nor am I an expert at the law.

As I sit here now in the commons of the law school I realize that everything I did this weekend prepared me to step into the classroom, unfortunately none of what I did actually prepared me to answer the questions my professor will pose. To do this I now realize it is going to take some actual thinking not just transcribing the facts and answering the simple questions. In fact, just completing the assignment is step one. Step two is thinking about what I read and actually making it make sense. Step three is taking those things that make sense and applying them to other things to solidify my understanding of the subject matter. I now realize I still have a long way to go with the material I studied this weekend.

As I sit here I also realize that most of my class members are incredibly obsessive with impressing everyone they possibly can. I am setting here typing up a blog post while my classmates are setting here discussing every little thing we read this weekend and attempting to make themselves sound intelligent by exemplifying their prior knowledge as well as what they think the law is for every topic under the sun. They also are obsessively using the vocabulary that we all only barely have a grasp of as it stands now.

So my advice to you this week is, do what you need to do to get the material down. Do not obsess over impressing your classmates, instead obsess over how well YOU think you learned the material. If you learned the material and you are able to demonstrate that in class then impressing your classmates will happen.