{"id":11460,"date":"2010-09-09T11:22:42","date_gmt":"2010-09-09T16:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=11460"},"modified":"2010-09-09T11:25:26","modified_gmt":"2010-09-09T16:25:26","slug":"what-i-wish-i-had-known-when-i-started-law-school-part-ii-disorientation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/09\/what-i-wish-i-had-known-when-i-started-law-school-part-ii-disorientation\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Wish I Had Known When I Started Law School, Part II: (Dis)Orientation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have to say, I found my first year of law school (at Duke — go Blue Devils!) like getting off the plane after a twenty-four trip to South Africa: profoundly disorienting.\u00a0\u00a0 Current 1Ls, I hope your orientation group was better than mine (I called my Mom and cried), I hope that you understand your reading somewhat<\/em>, and I hope that you have gone out a least once with the one nice person in your orientation group.\u00a0 So, now that stuff is over, what else do you need to know?<\/p>\n

I divide this up into two sections:\u00a0 How to Orient Yourself as a Human and How to Orient Yourself as a Law Student.<\/p>\n

How to Orient Yourself as a Human<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>It gets better.\u00a0 Well, kind of better, in a relative sense of the word<\/strong>:\u00a0 You will understand what your teachers are saying at some point.\u00a0\u00a0 You will know how to write a legal memorandum well.\u00a0 You will be able to speak clearly when a judge is impatiently looking at you.\u00a0\u00a0 It may not happen your first year, but it will happen.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>You need friends besides other law students<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 I am not kidding on that.\u00a0\u00a0 I, by random chance, ended up living with bio-medical engineering students and that was awesome.\u00a0 You need friends in the same city who care not one whit about law school or lawyers.\u00a0 It was healthy for me to hang out with people who did not care about what “injury” was in Torts and so forth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Milwaukee is a really nice city<\/strong>:\u00a0 The other subsidiary benefit of Friends Who Are Not Lawyers is that they get you out.\u00a0 In my first year, my friend Natalie dragged me out to all sorts of interesting parts of Durham, North Carolina.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And it turns out that Durham was really nice, and so was Raleigh, and I had lovely sweet tea and donuts at Krispy Kreme (before it blew up and went corporate).\u00a0\u00a0I like Milwaukee and highly recommend The AV Club: Milwaukee ( http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/milwaukee\/channels\/eatdrink\/2<\/a>) for good tips.<\/p>\n

How to Orient Yourself as a Law Student<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now that I have given you advice as a Human Being, let put on my Law Professor Hat:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Learn your study style<\/strong>:\u00a0 This is a lesson I learned as a professor.\u00a0\u00a0 Most students have no clue what their study style is and spend most of their first year wandering, clutching their outlines, like lemmings.\u00a0\u00a0 You might want to spend some time thinking about the best way you<\/em> study, and how that might change in law school.\u00a0 I have found that VARK test on study styles is very helpful: http:\/\/www.vark-learn.com\/english\/index.asp<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Take the test.\u00a0 It might turn out that clutching your outline like a security blanket is not helpful to you.\u00a0 For instance, you\u00a0might be a\u00a0visual learner who needs to break down different analytical elements of a rule spatially, rather than in words.\u00a0<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Practice the exam<\/strong>:\u00a0 If you have the opportunity in law school to practice the exam, practice the exam.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And by practice, I do not mean casually read previous exams.\u00a0\u00a0 No, I mean practice the exam in relevant exam conditions, and if feedback is possible (through your ASP, your professor, or your study group), get it.\u00a0 One question for all of you is: have you taken a law school exam, before? So, how do you know what you are doing?\u00a0 The last thing you want on the day of your exam is to be taking the test for the first time, while your classmate next to you is taking the exam for the second or third time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0\u00a0 I am always learning everyday<\/strong>: This is the best lesson from my first year in\u00a0the law.\u00a0 I am always learning everyday.\u00a0\u00a0I learn from my colleagues, I learn from my students, I learn from our alumni, I learn from cases and statutes.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So, this feeling that you don’t know anything — that you are disoriented —\u00a0it stays with you every day of your career as an attorney (but it gets better —\u00a0see above).\u00a0 But somewhere along the line, this reality \u2014 I am always learning everyday \u2014 becomes less scary and more like a grand adventure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have to say, I found my first year of law school (at Duke — go Blue Devils!) like getting off the plane after a twenty-four trip to South Africa: profoundly disorienting.\u00a0\u00a0 Current 1Ls, I hope your orientation group was better than mine (I called my Mom and cried), I hope that you understand your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-education","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}