What was the hardest thing about your 1L?

[Burning Sands]

The hardest thing for me to get used to was to acknowledge the fact that I couldn't predict jack sh!t.  Classes that I understood the best & knew I did the best on the final - turned out to be my worst grade.  And vice versa.

[smujd2007]

The hardest thing for me to get used to was to acknowledge the fact that I couldn't predict jack sh!t. Classes that I understood the best & knew I did the best on the final - turned out to be my worst grade. And vice versa.

I co sign on this. You can't predict anything. When you are in undergrad, you know that if you work hard, you will get good grades, because there are some people who aren't working hard. But in law school, everyone is working hard, but everyone is not necessarily working hard the right way. Don't let other people intimidate you and figure out what works for you. That was the hardest part for me. I knew what worked for me in undergrad, and instead of doing that, I bought into all of this stuff that books were saying, that other students were saying, etc.  It was not helpful at all. I'm not saying at all that law school is like undergrad.  It isn't.  But I was always active in my learning process in undergrad, I never listened to other students and other people and their experiences, and I always developed my own study plans, etc. according to what worked for me. So, figure out what works for you, and hold on for dear life. If you do decide to listen to other people's advice, take it with a grain of salt.  There is really no way to prepare. Good luck!!

[lawgirl]

The hardest thing for me to get used to was to acknowledge the fact that I couldn't predict jack sh!t.  Classes that I understood the best & knew I did the best on the final - turned out to be my worst grade.  And vice versa.

Exactly! I'm a 3L and that still happens to me occasionally. Really pisses me off!

[fansill]

I just finished my first semester and I found the hardest thing was never getting an answer from the professors. Anytime anyone asked a question - the professors would answer with another question. It took me a long time to realize there are never any hard and fast "right" answers. There are just lots of ways to argue both sides....That and no sleep!!!!

Faith In Massachusetts

[twarga]

The hardest thing for me to get used to was to acknowledge the fact that I couldn't predict jack sh!t.  Classes that I understood the best & knew I did the best on the final - turned out to be my worst grade.  And vice versa.

Exactly! I'm a 3L and that still happens to me occasionally. Really pisses me off!

Get the Book "Getting To Maybe."  You might be making one or more of the exam mistakes mentioned in the book.

[uagirliegirl]

the hardest part of my first year was realizing that grades are a total crap shoot.... for example.... my criminal procedure final was multiple choice, which means (hypothetically) a person can miss one question and get a B or two questions and get a C.  it all depends on how everyone else does.... but, is there really a difference between not missing any questions and missing two? not really.

[differencebetween]

People I had to hang with ... one or two jackass professors ...

I had more than 1 or 2 jackass pros .. I only had one jackass m.o.t.h.e.r.f.u.c.k.e.r pro, thou

[THE HOSTESS]

The hardest thing about it is the @ # ! * e d-up way of thinking you've to adopt. The best way to think about it is to imagine you've this weird way of thinking yourself that you're "projecting" from now on to your thinking processes while in the environment where your classes take place; that is to say, just think that you've to put up with this bad part of yourself that adheres to the assinine lawyers' way of thinking and that you're inexorably free from all that crap once out in the real world, away from the law school sorrounding madness!

In Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four there is a particularly chilling scene in which, after the director of the Ministry of Love has subjected Winston Smith to intense physical tortures, he employs another strategy in the process of Smith's gradual re-education.

^{"This time it will not hurt," [O'Brien] said. "Keep your eyes fixed on mine."
   At this moment there was a devastating explosion, or what seemed like an explosion.... A terrific, painless blow had flattened [Smith] out. Also something had happened inside his head ... somewhere or other there was a large patch of emptiness, as though a piece had been taken out of his brain.
   "It will not last," said O'Brien. "Look at me in the eyes.... Just now I held up the fingers of my hand to you. You saw five fingers. Do you remember that?"
   "Yes."
   O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb concealed.
   "There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?"
   "Yes."
   And he did see them, for a fleeting instant ... there had been a moment -- he did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps -- of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O'Brien's had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily as five, if that were what was needed ...
   "You see now," said O'Brien, "that it is at any rate possible."}

Compare this passage to Karl Llewellyn's famous description of the student's first year of law school: "The hardest job of the first year is to lop off your commonsense, to knock your ethics into temporary anesthesia. Your view of social policy, your sense of justice -- to knock these out of you along with woozy thinking, along with ideas all fuzzed along their edges."

Bot of course when we undertake the resolution of hard issues it will always be the case that the relevant legal concepts, the demands of social policy, and the ideal of justice will by necessity appear to sensitive interpreters to be "fuzzed along their edges." That very same formal, empirical, and ethical fuzziness is, after all, what makes hard issues hard. A successful legal education therefore both sharpens and desensitizes the adept's sense of analytical complexity, sharpening it so that the advocate can identify various plausible arguments, and then deadening it for the purpose of making and (especially) deciding between such arguments. This  characteristic doubleness of the legal mind produces the doubleness of the literal sophomore -- of the brilliant simpleton who understands and exploits and at appropriate times forgets -- the evidentiary problems, conceptual incommensurabilities, and ethical dilemmas that always characterize legal issues. To be trained to think like a lawyer is to be taught how to evoke all the chaotic complexity of law, and then how to repress the intolerable doubt that same evocation can produce by going on to achieve the "luminous certainty" required of the advocate or judge.   

[Bonkers, Jr.]

Law school sounds like hell. Someone needs to remake the Paper Chase.

[MidWestLawGril]

Your catgarokey is much scarier than law school! That thing is upsetting.

Anyway, I liked law school.  But I am weird.  It is much better than working, like I did for 5 years before. But I guess if you are coming out of undergrad, it is much more work than undergrad is.   I loved being able to come home and take a nap at 3:00, but of course then I had to study until 10:00. I enjoyed the topics though.

The most annoying thing about law school is all the random meetings and crap we have to sign up for.  Meetings with the career counselors, west law, lexus nexus, the registrar, the financial aid officer, bar-bri and the general feeling of not knowing what is going on or what is mandatory or not.  just my opinion.