A Week in the Life of a Law Student

I've been angling at this post for quite a while because I think it'll be interesting just to see what happens to all of those weeks that just fly past with nothing to show for them except a diminished bank account and dirty clothes. Hopefully it doesn't make me out to be too much of a bore but then again, each to their own as they say. Enjoy...


Monday

I would tell you that drinking the night before you have classes isn't a good idea but I don't need to as you are all bright people but then again apparently so am I and yet here I am with a pulsing hangover. It was just as well I only had one lecture today otherwise I don't think I would be alive to tell the story. There is something fundamentally wrong about putting your body through such a hardship and then when it's repaired itself, doing it all over again. You'll know the situation that I'm talking about: you are sitting in a warm lecture theatre, the lecturer is going on about something that you're not following (hence it's unbelievably boring) and you feel that you are either going to fall asleep or 'chunder' all over the unlucky sod in front of you - nothing says good morning like getting someones breakfast down your neck. I should really get to grips with the fact that alcohol abuse equals a lost day. I should be reading up on third-party rights just now but my eyes won't work for long enough without me wanting to fall asleep. Now short of me injecting coffee into my arm, I don't think anything will cure me except a good early night - and so say all of us.

Tuesday

I am slowly beginning to feel that this particular idea for a post is going to bore the masses but I'll bash on with it anyway. I feel like I am climbing a massive student hill at the moment which has a lot of steep individual climbs on the way like lecture preparation slopes and research rocks. I feel that if I ever get to the top of this hill then I'll finally be fully motivated but just now it's as if there's is a massive hand that keeps spamming my in the face as soon as I get anywhere near the top.
Today wasn't nearly as productive as it could have been because I finally managed to shake off the effects of the weekend and was feeling pretty alert for the first time in a fair few days. I did copy up notes (probably the most time consuming thing that you can do) and then found a little bit of time to make a list of everything that is coming up over the next few weeks just so I have a marker to refer to if ever I find myself idling - it's fair to say that I'll be referring to this list a lot. It also struck me that I have my first ever law exams in under 5 weeks which is quite an odd feeling considering it feels like I've only just started. I'll need to start preparing for them soon otherwise I'll end up cramming which is something I feel that I just won't get away with at university - especially not with law.

Wednesday

Struggled to get out of bed this morning - this kind of thing makes me feel like I should just get 'student!' tattooed onto my forehead because I am inadvertently being a stereotype. However when I did finally shake my bones, a plan of action was made! This is something that I've been doing ever since Standard Grades in high school: a little plan of the things that need to get done during the day. I even include the really obvious stuff like meals and shopping because it helps to give structure to my day. As a result I've managed to get more done today than I have in any day for the last 3 or 4 weeks. It's something that I'm going to have to do more (and something I would highly recommend) because with the exams coming up, plans and lists are about the only thing that will get me through.
Another thing I looked into tonight was mind-mapping. It's something that I've done before when I've had to memorise formula for maths or important points about plays and novels in English. I feel that they could come in handy for law because there is so much to remember that it will help to have a visual basis on which to build knowledge. I'll stop boring you now but it's something you might want to consider.

Thursday

Another run of the mill kind of day. I went to lectures, went to the union with a few folk and then proceeded to do the 'essentials' for the rest of the day. The kind of thing I mean is copying notes and preparing for lectures which I use as a starting place for my days and when I've done them I can move onto extra stuff. I've managed to get a lot more done this week by doing this and it's a habit that I'll hopefully be able to keep up.
I realise that this particular post is starting to look as mundane as my diary does because I'm basically doing the same thing every day. However I do think that it's important to reflect on what you've been doing at the end of a day because that way you can see what you're doing right and, more importantly, what you're doing wrong - I hope that's what you guys take from this post.

Friday

So finally the end of the week is upon me and yet again I'm not quite sure where it all went. Yes I've managed to get a fair bit of work done this week but it feels like Monday just finished rather than the fact that I'm heading into another weekend. Maybe this feeling will never change because, leaving aside some subtle timetable changes for next semester, it's going to be the same routine for the next 8 months or so. 
Before I know it, it'll be the Christmas holidays when I'll have time to reflect over the first 1/8th of my degree. Life passes us by pretty quickly but it only ever seems to be Fridays that I notice. The idea of 'living for the weekend' is one that is lost on me slightly but then again, as it has been pointed out to me today, I really don't have the same lifestyle as most of my peers. 
Anyway, I've only got one more tutorial this week and then it's homeward again. I've decided that I am going to end this post on a Friday because at the weekend (at least the weekends that I'm at home) things go back to how they were before I left which is great but it also means that it won't be of any interest to any of you. So, week done.


Thanks for reading. If you are reading this sentence now then you have more or less just followed me through a typical week in my life - exciting huh? Well not really as it happens because from my point of view, it's pretty dull. Yes I love my life as a whole, but the nuts and bolts of it are often fairly boring which won't change unless I want it to - we'll see about that.


Thanks again,


Martin