Jennie Barkinskaya
While riding my bike to the school library one Sunday morning I turned my head to look at a dog running around, and as soon as I turned back to look at where I was going, I was headed straight for a pole. During the very brief time in which I had to make a decision on what to do at that point, I decided to just go for it and crash into the pole head on. It actually wasn’t too bad, almost exhilarating. It was pretty fun to be thrown off the bicycle seat and then land right back on it again.
That’s kind of what law school is like; extremely frightening at some points but for the most part exciting, fun, and not that bad. Hopefully, the aftermath of my law school experience will be like the one that I had with the pole; there is a now big black streak on the pole from where my bike tire crashed into it.
Like crashing into a pole, the first semester of law school goes by extremely quickly. You almost don’t believe it happened. The days are long, but the weeks go by way too fast. This brief account of the first half of my first semester is by no means to be taken as the ultimate description of what law school is like. This is just a little story by a little Armenian girl going about her days at UC Davis School of Law looking at cute doggies and crashing into poles.
I entered law school thinking about the horror stories I had heard of how difficult and arduous it was, and yes, at some points it can be that way; but what I have had to keep in mind throughout the entire process is that it is a cycle of ups and downs.
There are weeks where there is an incredible amount of work and stress but there always comes a time when assignments and exams settle down for a bit giving you a chance to catch up, review, and even read ahead. Like my pole experience, you have to decide to face the challenge head on, go through with it and then take a breather and remind yourself that it wasn’t that bad.
Aside from the challenging and downright confusing reading assignments, one of the most difficult aspects of law school has been being away from my home and my family for the first time in my life. I’ve strategically placed items around my apartment that remind me of home: photographs, a tapestry hung on my bedroom wall, evil eyes, and several decorative vases and statuettes taken from my house in Los Angeles.
In addition, I keep up a steady diet of my grandmother’s cooking, provided to me, frozen, in Tupperware when my mother or boyfriend visit. Dolma, ichli kyofte, and zyiloni borscht are just a few examples. Despite this hardship of being homesick, in the long run being isolated from your life back home seems to be conducive to the law school lifestyle, which is essentially spending most of your time in the library. Everyone in law school, or any school of higher education does, however, have a different studying style.
If you are thinking about law school you can go out and read all the books you want, talk to all the attorneys and law students that you can find, but what I personally think is most important is to stay grounded. Do not take yourself or the entire experience too seriously, keep in mind where you came from, and take it as a learning experience. The problem with this piece of advice is that it is easier said than done. Also, as I heard a librarian here at school say to an anxious student expressing her anxieties about a midterm to a fellow student, “don’t worry”, and just study, because you’re not being tested on how much you can worry but on how well you can express what you have learned. Unfortunately, in law school you are not necessarily tested on how well you know a subject but on how eloquently you can express that knowledge in an organized, succinct, and thorough answer to
an essay question.
And now, I’ve got to get back to the library so I can get some reading done before having a good time on Halloween, because being in law school still involves having fun!
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