Logistics

I thought I would start with the simple stuff, and bring everyone up to speed about the past couple of weeks

Time:

One question I have been getting is when do you go to class, when are you free, etc. I have about two classes a day, typically one is 2 hours and one is 1 hour. They gave us a really nice schedule where we have 2-3 hours in-between classes to study and socialize:) I know it doesn't seem like a lot, but you will soon see it is! You know how in undergrad they always told you you should study 3 hours outside of class for every one hour inside of class? We always laughed about that, cause no one really studied 9 hours a week for a 3 credit class. I can no longer laugh, because now it is true, and then some.

My typical day consists of waking up, going to class, studying, going to class again, come home and having some down time (typically I pick something to clean, I know this wouldn't be downtime to most, but if you know me, you know it is to me:)) Then I study some more until 10 - 10:30. Then I give myself an hour to watch TV or something of the sort. Then I go to bed and start back up again. I take Saturdays off, to spend with Chris and everyone else, and then on Sunday I'm back to the crazy study schedule.

Now some of you may be asking, "do you really have to study that much? Or are you just being an overachiever?" And my answer would be both. In order to be prepared for class you have to have not only read the material, but understand it. All's we read (except for our writing class) is cases. And these cases can not only be long, they typically use language more sophisticated than the average person does (you know those judges, they want to sound smart). Because of this, reading the case at least 2 times, if not more, is par for the course. Not only do we have to read them, we have to brief them (condensing them to only the important information and deciding what precedent the court set that is important to the rule we are learning). All of this takes a significant amount of time and effort. Now I could just stop after I'm done reading and briefing, but what would be the point? I need to understand what I just read so I can think critically about it. So having to read 160+ pages of cases per week amount to LOTS of time!

Academics:

I have 5 classes...

Torts: is by far my favorite class. You can think of torts as what someone would sue you about if you injured them (battery, assault, false imprisonment, negligence, etc)

Contracts: pretty self explanatory. What constitutes a legal contract. Probably my least favorite. Not because I don't enjoy the subject matter, but because I go into every class thinking I have a full grasp of what we are learning, and leave confused.

Civil Procedure (Civ Pro): Another self explanatory one, we are learning about proper ways of bringing a suit in a federal court, and what we are required to do after the suit is brought. The professor for this class is awesome, mostly because he wears pink and purple shirts and has matching pink and purple glasses, with purple cufflinks:) And he calls out people in class

Property: Yet again, self explanatory. The BEST class to go to. This professor is so cool. We watch you tube in class, and he really knows how to bring the subject matter down to our level (talking about copyright laws in music and such)

WRAP: The dreaded writing class. This class is the only one we don't have with our whole section of 80 ppl. It has been the biggest reality check for me. I have always been a good writer, but my grammar has always sucked! In undergrad no one seemed to care that my grammar sucked, they just graded me on style. Now i get papers(luckily that don't count for a grade thus far) back with writing all over them about how much my grammar sucks!! It has been a good wake up call for me, I really need to improve on it so that in the future my colleagues will take my writing seriously. (yes you can take this as an invite to correct my grammar on this blog, if you so desire to do so. I love constructive criticism!)

There are a couple of things that all of the classes have in common:

1) People get randomly called on in class. It has not happened to me yet. I was nervous about this at first, but now that it has been a couple of weeks and I seem to know the answers to questions even when they are not asked to me, I am more confident that when I do get called out, I won't sound like an idiot

2)In every class but WRAP, the only grade you get are the exams. Some classes have a couple of exams per semester, most only have one at the end. This is driving me crazy as I am used to calculating my grade all semester and going into finals knowing I have an A no matter what.

Well I think that is long enough for one blog, hopefully it brought you a little up to speed. Now I'm in Torts and it's about to start, so I better pay attention