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dispatch no. 4

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dispatch no. 3

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dispatch no. 2

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letters

i’ve always written myself letters whenever i’m sad, happy, in love, or any other time i’m feeling some intense emotion. helps me process everything.

i’ve decided to share some of them with you.

shitty photography but here we are.

all the love.

[boooalmzr]

struggles

Law school has proved to be very difficult. The number of cases and books to read just to be able to manage a day with four classes border atrocity.

Studying full load and working an 8 hour shift made it even harder. Thinking of it, the price of ambition is extremely steep for those with less in life.

Honestly, I underestimated it. Silly me!

I thought for sure I could juggle the two. Don’t get me wrong, I knew from the time I was just taking my entrance exams that it would be difficult but man it was far beyond what I imagined.

It’s the sleeplessness that gets me. I practically sleep on commute. I just run home from office take a quick bath and then take the next bus to the nearest train station and then pray that I make it to school. If I’m lucky enough I get to sleep on the way.

Every chance I could get, I study and read my lessons. Inevitably, there are times that I am not able to study all my lessons and if my fate wills it, I will get cold called and shamed for not being able to answer.

Last midterm exams, I didn’t sleep for four days straight because of work and school. I thought I did okay. Except maybe for one subject during one of my evening exams when my head was already spinning from exhaustion.

Whenever I feel the struggles of my choice to attend law school, I often ask myself what I have gotten myself into? Trepidation looms near and hangs above me. Like a dark cloud of regret and uncertainty.

But I know that behind the darkest sky is the sun. It shines.

I will make it through.

UPDATE:

I did great during my exams! My mid-term and final grades were really satisfying and I really am proud of myself. I was ranked fourth in my entire class. Yay!

[boooalmzr]

preparation

Preparation is key.

Although I don’t think that one can ever really be prepared for law school, like any diligent student, I decided to do some advanced studying and other activities for me to at least get a good grasp of what I am to get myself into.

Some of what I do is not directly connected to studying. If any, I imagine they would teach me some valuable lessons that should be useful for when I enter the halls of the college of law. 

Initially, I scoured the web for study tips and pre-law school advises. Most of what I found are from five to ten years ago. The law evolves and it changes as the people, their views, and priorities change. Some may think that five to ten years is a touch too long of a time for those tips and advises to still be relevant but the thing is, the pedagogy in teaching law, for the most part, remains the same.

That said, I picked whatever I can from what I found and created a list of things I decided I would do before classes begin.

1. Exercise

I don’t have one athletic bone in my body, let’s start with that. I decided to hit the gym because I’m committed to inculcating a stronger sense of discipline.

When the going gets tough, only the tough gets going.

Law school is notoriously hard. I’ve seen a distant cousin battle through it at Rockwell. I’ve read stories from some of the brightest legal minds in the country about their struggles in the college of law and through their narratives one important characteristic helped them win their way to the bar exams and beyond: discipline.

2.Schedule

I created a daily schedule plotting my work, study, home, and gym hours.

The idea is to build a routine. The study of law is dry and routinary. Your routine becomes a habit and if you habitually study your subjects everyday it becomes second skin.

I imagine burn out may be avoided if we commit ourselves enough to the life of the mind.

What I did was plot my non-study activities first and then my readings. At this time, I only have 4 hours a day dedicated to advanced reading and studying but they will gradually take more of my time.

3. Write

I’d like to think that I have a decent handwriting but there is always room for improvement.

Professors check a lot of papers in the course of their days so we sort of help make their jobs easier when we write legibly. In this context, they might make our law school life difficult for us if we make their jobs difficult for them (or so they say). Neat essays get good grades.

4. Pre-read

Now, we might want to enjoy the rest of our time now because we will not have it aplenty when we enter law school. But if you’re like me and you don’t have much better things to do grab your book stands and go visit your nearest Rex Bookstore.

They suggest reading The Revised Penal Code (if you’re really bored). The first twenty chapters are particularly important because they will constitute most of our Criminal Law 1.

Personally, I got myself both the The Revised Penal Code and The 1987 Philippine Constitution codals. Well, we are told to learn to love reading, that’s why.

In reading these toms we are advised to follow the 3 Cs:

Codals comes first. These are where the black letter laws are.

Comments follow. These are books of experts whose interpretations yield wide academic acceptance on their specific fields of law.

Cases are last. Cases are those documents that come from the courts. They contain decided stories cases and precedents that our courts use in deciding other cases.

In doing this, we just want to get a feel of the volume of reading that we are to read, the loose understanding of the language in which we will read them, and the stress of information overload.

This is an incomplete list. I will ask around for more and I will share them with you as soon as I get the chance to.

Let me know if you have some tips as well. Your incoming 1Ls need them.

[boooalmzr]

Sunny Days

A year has passed and another one has commenced.

So much of who I am today was shaped by my experiences the previous year. My sister got married and an aunt passed away. I’ve never appreciated my family before as much as I do now. I have questions that bothered me for so long that I have settled with myself. I lost my first chance in achieving my dream but have picked myself up and found the heart to move on.

It’s been a journey, farewell 2018.

I have just gotten over the rush of the holidays and now its 2019.

This year I’m about to enter law school, finally. Needless to say, I’m afraid to the core. Almost everything I’ve read about law schooling has told me that I am about to go through the toughest time of my life. I believe them.

I am trying to prepare for it. I know you can never really be prepared for such endeavor, but that much I can do at the moment. I will be writing about it on my next blog entry.

I had started learning how to paint a few months back. I don’t have much of a hobby so I will do my best to stick to this one. On its own, its worth all the money and time I’ve already spent but It can also be a good outlet for when law school stress rears it’s ugly head.

I don’t know how it can happen but honestly, as much as I fear this new chapter in my life I am also filled with great anticipation. Excitement, almost.

There’s no looking into the future. We just have to do what we can at present to prepare for whatever may come ahead. Hope, we can also hope. That although yesterday was turbulent or gloomy tomorrow can be a sunny day.