Ramsey Cooper is a first-year student at Loyola Law School dedicated to centering community and humanity through her legal studies and career.
For weeks I studied, memorized, re-learned, and hoped for the best. In between the hours of studying, I would walk around my neighborhood for an hour to get much needed fresh air and sunshine. I was more appreciative than ever of an unseasonably warm December in SoCal.
It was hard not to feel overwhelmed when there were cases and rules to memorize and so little time to do it. I tried to focus on each day as it came instead of worrying about all of the inevitable future exams at once. During music class in elementary school, I was taught a song that goes:
“little by little, inch by inch,
by the yard it’s hard,
by the inch it’s a cinch,
never stare up the stairs,
just step up the steps,
little by little, inch by inch” written by Ron Hamilton. I recited these lyrics often as I went through large stack after large stack of flashcards trying to make the information stick.
The day after my last exam, my cat and I boarded a plane to Virginia. Immediately upon landing in my home state, I felt that I could finally relax. I saw friends and family, made tiramisu for the first time, and walked my family dog every morning.
For me, this break was about rediscovering the self care rituals I left behind during finals, but that kept me from burning out during the semester.
Before finals, I fell asleep reading a book every night because I read somewhere that it’s better for your brain than scrolling or TV. During finals, this ritual faded because reading felt more like a chore than a relaxing endeavor. After finals, I made reading a priority again. Over break, I finished five books. My favorite of those books is Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I started it on the plane ride to Virginia, and it was so good that I was sad to find myself at the end a couple of days later.
Going home was the reset that I needed to prepare for the second semester and internship application season.