My law review submission isn't totally done yet. The submission packet
requires excessive amounts of copies and I still have to check all my
citations again, but I'm over the hump as far as the majority of the
work.
A few days before I started on my entry, Heidi wrote an entry about how isolating
she found the write-on competition at her school. I hadn't started yet
on my submission, but I'm glad she wrote it. It was a good warning.
The write-on submission has been hard, not so much because of the topic
or the citations but because it's such lonely work. As Heidi said, it's
isolating. The rules of the competition forbid discussion with
anybody about anything law review. The most I have managed is a vague
complaint about the amount of work and there's only so much generic,
unidentified whining that can be done in a conversation.
Until I was forbidden from any legal conversation I hadn't realized how
much I talked about law with my friends on a daily basis. While I miss
the serious conversations in which we puzzled out new areas of law, I
miss the jokes about a tort case or mock despair at the intricacies of
civil procedure more. It's the daily interaction that I miss.
I didn't expect to run into this. I'm a solo studier. I never jointly
prepared an outline or a brief, never joined any official study groups,
and never went to any of the discussion groups or review sessions that
my school offers. The only "official" joint studying that I did was
practice exams: whenever I took a practice exam, I scheduled it for
when one or more of my classmates was taking it and we discussed the
results.
But what I realize now is that while I didn't do any official joint
studying, I engaged in a tremendous amount of informal interaction that
undoubtedly helped me learn during the year. As I wrote earlier, I liked my classmates,
and I regularly chatted with most of them. I shared my outlined topics
and notes freely with those who asked, and my classmates likewise shared back where
I had questions. It wasn't formal, but, I realize now, it was
substantial.
I suspect I would make a very bad novice nun in an order that has taken
a vow of silence. I'm ready to throw in the towel after a week in which
conversation is forbidden on one topic only. Very, very bad silent nun
material.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I know exactly what you mean. Working with other people irritates me because of my own random way of studying. But I do pick up things, not only in supervisions, but also because we'll crack stupid jokes or ask each other dumb questions.
We don't have anything like a write on, but I've noticed that EVERYBODY seems to be doing it.
I think the write-on is really common here -- I think most law schools do it.
And I agree, my method of studying is random and not suited to other people, but I do love me some good law jokes!
The best jokes we came up with were for Roman Law. There was this emancipation process known as mancipatio, we changed it, to be indicative of the entire syllabus as MANKY-patio. Sad, I know.
Actually eerily reminiscent of the jokes we made in civil procedure... very bad. :)
Post a Comment