{"id":3612,"date":"2009-02-05T22:16:37","date_gmt":"2009-02-06T03:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=3612"},"modified":"2009-02-05T22:16:37","modified_gmt":"2009-02-06T03:16:37","slug":"reflections-of-a-3l-installment-one-put-down-that-book-and-go-to-the-gym-or-yes-you-do-have-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/02\/reflections-of-a-3l-installment-one-put-down-that-book-and-go-to-the-gym-or-yes-you-do-have-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections of a 3L, Installment One: Put Down That Book and Go To the Gym; or, Yes, You Do Have Time."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As I\u2019m very, very fond of telling people, I am now a 3L. \u00a0A 3L in my last semester, no less. \u00a0Actually, I will graduate exactly 100 days from today. \u00a0(Awesome.) \u00a0So I\u2019ve been reflecting a bit lately on my law school career, and I\u2019ve noticed that there are ways I could have managed parts of it better. \u00a0As many of you already likely know, I have a general propensity to dispense unasked-for advice. \u00a0Lucky for me, Professor O\u2019Hear kindly offered me the opportunity to climb up on my e-soap box here. (Thanks so much for that!) \u00a0Thus I bring you\u2026<\/p>\n

Reflections of a 3L, Installment One: Put Down That Book and Go To the Gym; or, Yes, You Do Have Time.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

The more you move your body, the more energy you have to move your body. \u00a0Exercise introduces endorphins into your system that make the daily grind seem smoother. \u00a0And my mother swears \u2013 though I\u2019m pretty sure she\u2019s making this up \u2013 that your body will grow new blood vessels to your brain if you exercise on a regular basis. \u00a0As my fellow 3L Staci Flinchbaugh put it, there is just no downside to exercising. \u00a0Not that I\u2019ve been doing it much during law school. \u00a0Ok, at all. \u00a0 I haven\u2019t been exercising at all. \u00a0There was never a time when I decided, \u201cOk, absolutely no more physical activity for me aside from pack-muling these books to and from class.\u201d \u00a0It just happened by increments. \u00a0Not today, I have that brief due. \u00a0Not today, I am super far behind in my reading. \u00a0Etc. \u00a0I even signed up for a Pilates class my first semester. \u00a0Alas, my attendance was short-lived. \u00a0And it likely resulted in a group of undergrads who still discuss the weird woman who came to Pilates and kept falling asleep on the mat. \u00a0<\/p>\n

In retrospect, though my reasons for not exercising didn\u2019t seem like excuses, they were. \u00a0Law school is stressful. \u00a0It\u2019s also expensive. \u00a0Job hunting is stressful as a rule. \u00a0But we\u2019re in an economy where the lead banner on the American Bar Association\u2019s website has a picture of dollar-bill George Washington sporting a black eye, seated next to the declaration that we are in a LEGAL RECESSION. \u00a0(Yes, really<\/a>.) \u00a0I may be an extreme case, but I do think it fair to say that as far as law students go, our type-A personalities, our dedication to excelling in our chosen field, and our loans engender in many of us the belief that we simply don\u2019t have the time to do anything but work on making law school work. \u00a0If we don\u2019t have time to sleep, then how do we have time to go to the gym? \u00a0Obviously we want to make the most out of our time here; but, I fear that we forget that the habits we enter into in our time in school are likely precursors to the habits we will maintain as practicing attorneys. \u00a0And my best guess is, the stress isn\u2019t going to go away. \u00a0Soon there will be real people whose real lives will depend on our performance. \u00a0If we don\u2019t have habitual coping mechanisms in place, what are we going to do? \u00a0The statistics do not paint a pretty picture.<\/p>\n

Lawyers are not a healthy bunch. \u00a0Attorneys as a group have epidemic depression. \u00a0(Don\u2019t think so? \u00a0Well, the problem has its own website. \u00a0Check out www.lawyerswithdepression.com.) \u00a0There is also an incredibly high incidence of alcoholism in our field. \u00a0According to the Legal Profession Assistance Conference<\/a>, about a quarter of us are alcoholics. These are factors that speak of a community that does not cope well with the large amounts of stress we endure. \u00a0My point is, the oft-mentioned, rarely-explicated \u201cwork\/life balance\u201d probably includes you moving your well-educated self around more than you currently do. \u00a0<\/p>\n

How do I know? \u00a0Let\u2019s just say I recently realized that there\u2019s me and there\u2019s my 2L interview suit and nevermore the twain shall meet, and leave it at that. \u00a0So I started dragging myself back to the gym. \u00a0(Note: step aerobics is NOT like riding a bike. \u00a0You DO forget how.) \u00a0I tried, as a week-long experiment, treating workouts like they were my absolute top priority. \u00a0I went every day. \u00a0And, wouldn\u2019t you know it, my energy went up and my stress went down. \u00a0It actually seemed like there was more time in the day. \u00a0It seemed like the things that normally tend to irk me were decidedly less irksome. \u00a0And I am not completely lost in all my classes. \u00a0Actually, I\u2019m not even behind. \u00a0I just took note of those times during the day where I had scheduled in \u201cwork on X\u201d but knew I would not be working on X, but rather perusing facebook or watching trashy T.V., because I would be too mentally exhausted to work on X. \u00a0Instead I scheduled \u201cgo to gym.\u201d \u00a0Now, do I think I will keep up the every day regimen for the rest of the year? \u00a0No. \u00a0I will not. \u00a0And yes, that will still be me you see shamelessly taking the elevator every time I have to go to the third floor. \u00a0But the success of my experiment brought home the fact that at many points throughout school I have given myself the false choice between taking care of myself and taking care of my school work. \u00a0This is not a choice I can habitually make and be a healthy lawyer. \u00a0<\/p>\n

We have the time to take care of ourselves, because we don\u2019t have the time not to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I\u2019m very, very fond of telling people, I am now a 3L. \u00a0A 3L in my last semester, no less. \u00a0Actually, I will graduate exactly 100 days from today. \u00a0(Awesome.) \u00a0So I\u2019ve been reflecting a bit lately on my law school career, and I\u2019ve noticed that there are ways I could have managed parts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[60,34,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-legal-education","category-marquette-law-school","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}