A Day In the Life of A 1L Evening Student

As a student in the evening program that works part-time, my days surely look very different from your typical law student. Before starting law school, I scaled down how many hours I work each week to free up some time to study and also to keep up hobbies of mine. I knew from the beginning that I wasn’t willing to forego my exercise routine, experimental cooking, and time with my family.

Typically, I start each day by going to the gym around 5 am and I tutor my first student at 9 am. Sometimes I have other students after that and some days I don’t. During the week, I come home and experiment a little bit with cooking in the middle of the day and work on my food blog, but then I make my way to campus usually some time between 2 and 4 pm to study, handle anything that I need to on campus, and review my notes for class. I do most of my reading for class over the weekend so that during the week I’m not so pressed for time to study and I’ve noticed that it really helps! I have class Monday-Thursday at 6 pm, but I don’t work after class most days. This is a luxury that I have that many other evening students do not because they work full time and utilizing that time after class to study is often critical for them. I make it a point to wind down after class instead and prioritize sleep since I wake up so early. I have found that a lot of law students push themselves to do more work and review more and, in the process, don’t sleep enough. It may seem counterintuitive, but this extra studying might actually be hurting them if it consistently gets in the way of them getting proper sleep. So, I have made the conscious decision not to fall into that trap if I can avoid it.

The only way that I’ve been able to sustain this lifestyle is by careful planning and time management. Without this, I wouldn’t be able to balance law school, work, and my hobbies and, if I didn’t do that efficiently, all areas of my life would suffer. I definitely think there’s a method to my madness because I’ve done well in my classes thus far, I just have to hope I can keep it up!