Survivors Guide to Law School.

Think about all of the stereotypes of law school and legal types and I can assure you that what you visualise it quite close to the truth. From the Audi driving, immaculately dressed uptown girls to the tutor that wears nothing but sweater and shirt combo's and perpetually has a cup of coffee attached to his hand. The work is hard and unfortunately I'm learning that there are no shortcuts. You work hard or you fail. If you fail and repeat this adds to your ever increasing study debt.

I had an exam on Friday. It went horribly to say the least. Ridiculous time contraints on work that if done properly, would most likely take a couple of days to complete. There were tears and extreme stress from class mates. There was delirious laughter by some upon completion and you could tell exactly what they were thinking, "what the fuck have I gotten myself into?!"


This leads me to a discussion of a brilliant website my sweater-wearing, caffeine-addicted tutor got the class onto, 'Law School: A Survivor's Guide.' One post particularly amused me, it was one of the "You know you're a .... when ..." things that you often see floating around facebook. A few of them were so spot-on and brilliant that they warranted a re-post in my blog.

So you know you're in law school when...

• "You can't remember if you decided to come to law school because you wanted to help people and make a difference in the world or because you hate yourself."
• "In high school, receiving a mark of 80% was the end of the world. Now you're at law school a mak of 80% feels like the best thing that will ever likely happen to you."
• "You can't watch legal shows because of all the inaccuracies. You prefer to watch the far more realistic medical dramas and dream about the career you could have had."
• "When someone tells you things are not as bad as they seem, that person is wrong. Things are as bad as they seem, and they may actually be worse."
• "You realise your life is full of lawsuits waiting to happen. Someone knocks you over at the train station - assault? You're also carrying a bag - trespass to goods? The floor is wet and hasn't been mopped - negligence?"
• "Come exam time you get incredibly frustrated by the amount of study time you lose to mundane yet essential tasks like eating, sleeping and showering..."

Just to reiterate one of the above points, the whole time I was writing this I was thinking about the legalities about not properly attributing the above quotes to it's rightful author. Plagiarism? Copyright infringment?

The fundamental point is this: law life be a cynical life.