My Winter Break

My experience with exams this past fall semester was very different than my experience as a 1L. As a 1L you take exams for all of your classes, some of them are midterms and some of them are finals. Nonetheless they all seem equally daunting and terrifying. As a 2L however, I had the opportunity to take classes I was interested in in addition to my required bar courses, and that made the experience more enjoyable. As a 2L, I also had a combination of essay exams, projects and traditional closed-book exams. This definitely alleviated some of the exhaustion I felt as a 1L. Having the ability to switch between memorizing large quantities of information, and essay-writing of narrow prompts definitely provided a different (and welcome) pace to the end of the year exams. What I missed from 1L was the comradery of testing with your section. For me it was nice talking to people who were just as stressed out as me until the very end. Having people to study with and commiserate was such an important part of 1L that I missed it as a 2L. This semester some of my friends were done with exams while I was still in finals mode, so when I went on social media, I saw with a little envy how relaxed they were!

Now at the half-point of law school, it is refreshing to realize that everything has turned out fine. As a 1L, I was definitely panicked about every single thing in law school. Much of the anxiety I felt I believe came from the fact that I was navigating strange waters. As the first in my family to go to law school, everything has been new and unfamiliar. While I am still anxious for what is yet to come, I have definitely learned to let certain things go. I also find it comforting that the last year and half has just flown by. I am looking forward to the next 18 months, as I continue to approach my goal of becoming an attorney.