Your first year is a marathon, not a sprint. Slacking off or sprinting ahead in September will make for a difficult December. Keep in mind, it’s usually the students who consistently show up and work hard every day who succeed, not the person rolling into class 20 minutes late.
You have embarked on a new journey, but you have also joined a new community in the truest sense of the word. Think of those around you. Hold open the door for the person coming into class behind you. Introduce yourself to strangers. Say “Hi” to Carol when you swipe your ID card at the front desk.
Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to what is happening in the present moment without judgment. It includes both a formal, usually seated, meditation practice and a more general approach to life. Mindfulness practitioners seek to bring their full attention to whatever they are doing throughout the day. Mindfulness is a wonderfully simple idea that many of us – particularly high achieving lawyers and law students – find very difficult to implement. Our minds tend to dwell on the past (“Did that interview/exam go well?”) or race to the future (“Will I pass the bar/get a job after graduation?”). Keeping our attention in the present can be a formidable challenge, yet studies show that being mindful increases our health, productivity, and happiness. The documented benefits of mindfulness range from reducing stress and anxiety, to improving focus and concentration, enhancing listening and communications skills, and increasing overall wellbeing. Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the first people to promote mindfulness in the U.S., and others at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, have shown that mindfulness provides …
Sometimes we put so much focus on finishing something, that we don’t give credence or attention to how we began. We look at the result, how we did, what we have to show for it, and don’t respect the first steps we took to make it to the end. As law students, it’s easy to use your grades as a measurement of your experience during a semester, but really the path to those grades started fourteen weeks before the exam. And now, with the spring semester just beginning, you have the opportunity to start off as strong as you mean to end. What do I mean by that? In order to do well on exams, you must approach the entire semester in a manner that will lead to success in the end. If doing well on exams takes hard-work, grit, and determination, then you must put hard-work, grit, and determination into your everyday routine. It’s early in the semester and exams seem far away, but that doesn’t mean you should take it easy. Take advantage of …
Have questions about Temple Law exam schedules, Examsoft/SofTest, take-home exam procedures or other exam-related information? Check out the Exams section of the Temple Law website. “…we have still not reached the end of all our trials. One more labor lies in store boundless, laden with danger, great and long; and I must brave it out from start to finish.” – Homer, The Odyssey Classes have ended but your work is not done. Although the task that lies ahead will not involve an encounter with Sirens (as far as I know), preparing for and taking law school exams will take focus, stamina, and effort from start to finish. Here are some tips to help you through the next two-and-a-half weeks. Know What You Don’t Know Be realistic about where you need to focus your efforts. Students tend to concentrate on subjects or material they know well or enjoy, but everything is fair game on an exam. Just because you hate a topic, that doesn’t mean it won’t show up on the test. Be sure to take …
The Thanksgiving holiday is just around the corner and the atmosphere at the law school is getting tense. Exams are approaching faster than we want or expected, and you have classes to prepare for, outlines to write, flowcharts to create, flash cards, LRW memos – anxiety is rising. At this point in the semester, you may be thinking to yourself, “When will I have the ahah moment?” “When will the light bulb go on for me?” “I haven’t started / done much work on outlines. So and so has this great 50-page outline already.” “I can’t even keep up with my class prep and get my memo done.” “How can I bring all this material together?” “I bombed my practice exam!” Etc, etc. Remember: Everyone who has ever been in law school (including myself and the rest of your faculty) felt the same way at this time of year, especially during their first year. I can still remember how I felt around this time of year. I was ready to quit, and felt like I could …
I wish I could say I had an easy first year of law school. I didn’t. Tragedy came into my life with full force that year. Starting in June, my grandfather’s health started rapidly declining as he battled congestive heart failure. That August, my little sister returned from Tanzania. She spent six weeks dodging malaria while she studied abroad, and two days before she flew home, she contracted it. She spent a couple of weeks quarantined in Abington Memorial Hospital a few floors above my grandfather. That September, I started having attacks again. I can’t remember when I experienced my first attack. I do remember I was finishing up my junior year of college. The pain was so intense, I couldn’t sleep through the night. I called a close friend to bring me to the hospital, certain that I’d be diagnosed with appendicitis. I wasn’t. They couldn’t find anything wrong with me. So, they gave me some aspirin and sent me home. Yet two years later, during my first year, the attacks were back with …
We are more than half way through the fall semester, and for many law students, late October is a time for looking ahead to what is in front of them. You have settled in to a routine, finals are on the horizon, and you may be asking yourself questions such as, how much more reading can there be? When am I going to outline? Will I travel for Thanksgiving? Looking ahead is critical because knowing what you have to do and when you have to do it keeps you focused and on task. And really, time marches on no matter what anyone does. The semester will end and finals (like winter) are coming. Just as important, however, is looking back at where you have been. Like a coach or player at halftime, now is the time to think about self-assessment and adjustment. Granted, you don’t have a score to use as a measurement of your performance, but you can think about your classes, how you have approached them so far, and whether that approach is …
This past May, I graduated from Temple Law School. Let me tell you, it was a satisfying feeling. Law school takes up so much of your time and most law students are consumed with not only doing well in law school but doing law school “right.” What is the best way to read cases? How should I set up my outline? What classes should I take to prepare for the bar exam? It can be a period full of uncertainty. You might ask any of those questions to five different people and you will receive eight different answers. Contrary to what some folks will tell you, or try to sell to you in a book, there is no “right” way to do law school. Of course you have to do the work and go to class, which is true of any academic program. Beyond that, the three or four years you spend in law school are your own and you can make of them what you wish, but for what it’s worth, I would like …
I begin this blog post with the following caveat; I am a die-hard Philadelphia Eagles fan. The recent success of Temple Football coupled with Chip Kelly’s first offseason as General Manager has football on the minds of a lot of Philadelphians and Temple Law students. Chip Kelly has brought energy to the Philadelphia Eagles that has revitalized the franchise, fan base, and city. On a more personal level, Coach Kelly helped me turn around my 1L year after a tough first semester. Law students are always looking ahead. We know that finals are always lurking around the corner, even in the middle of September. Without fail, a student in the first day of class will raise his or her hand and ask, “Can you tell us anything about the final?” We spend our free time planning out the semester and anticipating final grades. We wonder how those grades will stack up next to our classmates, and where our success will lead us. We worry about when to send applications out to interview for jobs we …
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