Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Two Weeks to Go

My law school orientation starts in twelve days. It is only two days long, so it is now exactly two weeks until my law school classes start. It really hit me the other night that in two weeks I will be walking into a law school classroom as a law school student. I could see the classroom and everything. I am still feeling some intermittent anxiety about school. I think the comparison I made in the post I just linked to with pregnancy is really appropriate. The decision was made a long time ago, but I have this long gestation period before anything happens. And, for me, having a long time to think with nothing much to do leads to anxiety. Anyway, I will be fine in two weeks when school actually starts and I am busy.

The first three weeks will just be Legal Methods which is like Intro to Law School and is a pass-fail class. After Labor Day the rest of the classes (Contracts, Torts, Civil Procedure) start. Unfortunately we do not get our schedules until the first day of orientation, so I can't make plans for how I am going to spend my days or look up what prior students said about my professors or buy books. Oh well, it is probably for the best... I would be obsessing over everything if I had my schedule. As it is I am forced to do other things, like buy highlighters and a lunch bag and a planner.

By the way, my time and task management system has changed somewhat since this post. I am still using Life Balance, but I am no longer using Rainlendar. Instead I reinstalled Google Desktop (it came installed on my Dell and I had uninstalled it) and have a google calendar gadget in my sidebar. I am also using Mozilla's Sunbird to view and edit my Google Calendar. I tried to use Sunbird a while ago and could not get it to work properly with Google Calendar, but now, with the Provider for Google Calendar add-on, it does. So I can access my calendar in my sidebar, in a desktop application or on the web. I like that. Also I have decided to get a paper planner as well so I don't have to pull out the laptop every time I think of something I need to do or want to check what I am supposed to be doing. I got a weekly planner that has the week over two pages and no times so that I can just enter stuff free form. I think I will use it mostly to write down my most important tasks for the day (Life Balance will help me figure out what those are), things I think of when I am not at the laptop, and events that I want to go to.

5 comments:

Andrea said...

The intro class sounds really helpful. Like a way to wade into the waters, rather than being thrown into the middle of the ocean. ;) Good luck!!! The weeks leading up to law school are exciting!!

Anonymous said...

It's pretty cool of your school to offer three weeks on how to approach law school rather than just throwing you off the deep end! Don't be too anxious. It's really hard to plan until you're in it and then it's hard to be anxious with so much going on (although not impossible!)

saramel said...

Thanks for the support guys!

Mongrels are raising themselves. said...

A lunch bag - what a great idea, I had forgotten all about that kind of thing!

You are now 9 days from your great beginning - I am pulling for you! Moms rock saramel.
s

saramel said...

Thanks 1L wannabe!