Slow Learner

Yesterday I went to a meeting called "How to be Successful in Law School." It was a panel talk with 4 3Ls (the editor of ND's Law Review, the President of the Student Bar Association, the captain of the moot court team, and the executive officer of the Public Interes Law Forum) discussing their methods of success while in law school. There were a few standard, to-be-expected comments like "don't fall behind," "don't skip class," etc. One interesting commonality in all of their speeches, though, was that they all started out with a story of how when they were freshmen, they were too paranoid with work and studying. They spent all of their time in the library and all they did was work, work, work.

The take home message they wanted us to get out of that was that we shouldn't be too obsessive or anal retentive our 1L year. We'd be happier with balance, we need to calm down. Cuz once they hit their 2L year they slowed down on the work and started doing other things and then they felt happier/more balanced/etc.

The take home message I got? Well, clearly everyone of these students is at the very top of his/her game. They have the most prestigious spots one can have here at ND Law, and every single one of them spent their whole freshman year in the library, obsessing over work and not much else, and then their 2L year they tackled extra curriculars and got to the top of those, and then their 3L year, they had all of the positions most coveted here. All four of them had almost the exact same story. So, CLEARLY, despite their warnings and advice, I need to be doing EXACTLY what they did if I want to succeed here.

The ironic bit is that maybe this is evidence of how I'm a slow learner. And slow learners probably aren't going to succeed in law school....