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Minority and Non-Traditional Law Students / Nay-Sayers
« on: June 08, 2007, 08:50:04 AM »
Okay, this is a bit of a rant, but hopefully it does generate useful discussion. It seems that everywhere I go, some "helpful" person who is attending or graduated law school is telling me in condescending tones that my plan to continue working (only part time) and take a full course load in Law School will be "impossible." The common theme seems to be that I will be so shell-shocked by the workload as a 1L that I will not have time to breathe, let alone focus on a job. Any attempt by me to rationalize my decision seems to be met with vague assertions of "what do you know, you're just a 0L" or "you'll understand when you get there." The problem is, I just can't grasp the "impossible" nature that these people describe. I know what my schedule will be, I feel that I have a good idea of what the work load will be, and I have made arrangements in my life to set a lot of things aside to make time for that work load. Can it really be THAT bad?
This raises several questions that I would love to hear from other "non-trads" about. Am I just being delusional in thinking that I can work this out without having to go without sleep for my first year? Are the people that I am talking to just talking up the difficulty of the 1L experience to soothe their own egos? Am I being real with myself in assuming that abilities like time management and priotizing that I have honed in my "real world" experience will give me the edge to pull this off and still be academically competitive? Could this just be a function of the "straight from undergard to 1L crowd" casting their experience on others in a different station in life? I would love to hear from some other people that did this and can give me some reasonable assessment of what it's actually like to continue a career and be a law student at the same time.
This raises several questions that I would love to hear from other "non-trads" about. Am I just being delusional in thinking that I can work this out without having to go without sleep for my first year? Are the people that I am talking to just talking up the difficulty of the 1L experience to soothe their own egos? Am I being real with myself in assuming that abilities like time management and priotizing that I have honed in my "real world" experience will give me the edge to pull this off and still be academically competitive? Could this just be a function of the "straight from undergard to 1L crowd" casting their experience on others in a different station in life? I would love to hear from some other people that did this and can give me some reasonable assessment of what it's actually like to continue a career and be a law student at the same time.