Why Are You Reading This!?!? It's Not a Textbook You Know...

Well what an interesting first few weeks I've had with my course. I think the most important thing I should mention right from the top is that I'm loving the work I'm doing just now. Yes I've had a lot of reading to do and there have been times when I've just not understood something, but as I said to someone last night: "starting to study law is like learning something maths from the start". I couldn't do calculus when I first started to add and with some help from this analogy I've seen that it's going to take me time to find my feet - hopefully not too long because my first exams are only 9 weeks away! I felt that I should get that in before I go ahead and tell you what the last couple of weeks have been like otherwise you might get the impression that I am not enjoying myself but that is far from the truth.

So as I expected, studying law hasn't been a walk in the park by any means. In fact I think it's the case with most of my peers who are starting university that nothing has been easy so far. It's all very well turning up to all of your lectures and then having the majority of the day off but when you look at course handouts or tutorial problems, you begin to see that lectures are only the beginning. The hardest things from my point of view since I started my degree has been reading case reports which is something that I never really thought would be that challenging. I would say that the longer the case and the longer the speeches from the judges, the harder it is to decipher. But going back to my analogy about learning maths; I'm just learning to add and subtract at the moment so I certainly can't expect to be able to multiply and divide. It will all come together in its own time because, as big headed as this may sound, I'm very capable to getting this subject under my thumb. I look around me in the law library and see hundreds of older student, diligently thumbing through statute books and textbooks and I like to think that they were feeling the same way about not being able to understand cases and legal concepts when they started. I know that I'll find my way through this initial mine field simply because I can't think of doing it any other way or more to the point I can't think of anything else I want to do.

Now after that last sentence there you might be thinking that the way it was worded that I might be regretting my choice to study law. Again I would like to make it clear that although it was the biggest decision on my life, it was certainly the right one and I'm going to go on and prove it to everyone. The main reason that I decided to do law was because it was going to be a challenge for me; one that would have to be undertaken with the utmost sincerity and dedication. Now that I'm finally doing it I can see that it's going to be even harder than I first thought but that only encourages me to do better.

As for the small matter of being away from home for the longest period in my life (the longest being a 2 week holiday in Toronto quite a while back): well it's been getting better as each day goes past and as likely as there are to be challenges in this part of my life as well I'm fairly sure I'll reap the rewards. My room now looks like it did at home (dirty socks on the floor and football posters on the wall), I am almost able to make food like I would get at home and most importantly I've got my laptop which keeps me in contact with people from home. It's only really my address that has changed, nothing much else.

So I'll try and keep this thing going for as long as I see fit but I think that there will be long periods of silence when exams come around. I hope to be able to do it weekly or even bi-weekly but I'll see how things go.

Thanks again for reading and for those to whom it applies: get back to your textbook!

Cheers, 

Martin