#so i suppose THAT in combination with their grades/LSAT score/whatever else they had was probably impressive

[katierosefun]

hi!! kind of a weirdly specific question but i was wondering what kind of clubs/extracurriculars you did in your undergrad that you decided to include on your law school applications? i'm in a couple clubs but with the new school year coming up i'm trying to broaden my horizons so to speak :)

hi anon!! thanks for the ask--i'm always glad to offer any advice/share about law school and applying to law school, just because i know how hella stressful that time period can be!

i included all the clubs that i had some position in--which was easy, because by the time i was applying to law school, i was on the leadership team for all the orgs i was a part of. so for me, that was the school newspaper, the literary magazine, as well as a religious group. but on top of that, i also included some heavy research projects that i did--because in my junior and senior years of college, i pursued a research fellowship that had to do with criminal law. i also included internships that i held (like teaching poetry to kids in the juvenile justice system), part-time jobs (an office position, a theater position), and the like.

so, outside of those research fellowships + internships, there's probably not a lot here that might seem obviously relevant to a law school application. however, the beauty of law school--as i'm sure you already know--is that you don't have to pursue a specific major or have a specific background in order to go to law school. however, i do think that the organizations i was a part of demonstrated to law schools that

a) i have decent time management skills (because doing research, as well as working two part-time jobs, and being on the e-board for three different orgs while applying to law schools demonstrates that) and

b) i have a genuine appreciation and interest in writing (because my orgs were very specific to that) and

c) i know how to collaborate with different people.

so really, if the orgs you're a part of have something that can demonstrate those kinds of traits, then i'd say you're in good shape. (now, of course, if you write something in your law school personal statement that you want to go to law school to pursue . . . idk, patent prosecution work, then i would hope you had something on your resume to demonstrate that: like maybe you were a part of a science-based org or you're pursuing a degree in a hard science, something like that).

tl;dr: i included all my orgs, which was easy, because i had leadership roles in all of the orgs i was actively involved in / don't worry about finding the club that would impress law schools the most subject-matter wise--just make sure you've got something to talk about via those clubs, especially with regards to leadership, collaboration, etc. and also, don't forget about the relevance of any research projects / thesis projects / part-time jobs!

[canaryatlaw]

okay. well today was okay. I woke up to my alarm bright and early at 6:30. checked the bus tracker app right away and saw one that should arrive at 7:03, perfect amount of time for me to get ready, grab breakfast, and walk to the bus stop. I made one of the microwave muffins but couldn’t finish before I had to head out and I couldn’t bring a spoon with me into the room and we didn’t have any plastic cutlery so I used my fingers for the rest of it 😂 oh well. So I left my apartment, leaving my phone and pretty much everything else behind me, just my wallet and some pencils. I got on the bus and headed north, a route I’ve taken before but I usually take it south, I have done it north before but never this far up. there were too many stops for me to copy down all of them, so I was paying apt attention to the names of the stops to make sure I didn’t miss it. Fortunately since it was a train station it was a fairly prominent stop. So we got there, it’s like 7:13 at this point, so making good time. I knew we would because everything’s deserted this early in the morning but I wanted to make sure to allot for extra time in case something went wrong and I’m essentially helpless to fix it. so I got on the purple line which goes into Evanston and continued heading north, got off six stops later and from there walked like .4 miles down a street to the Northwestern campus. The neighborhood was super cute, of course it was virtually empty save some cyclists and a few random people, so it appeared very tranquil, definitely different than the constant hustle and bustle of Chicago. I sometimes wish I taken advantage of my excellent grades more and gone to a college and/or law school that was more prominently ranked, but at the same time I know I probably only want that for bragging rights, which is a dumb reason to pick a school. but like, looking at the Northwestern campus and the prestige that came with it I’m just like....I kinda want that. and like, it’s not like I’m going into “big law” and need their name on my resume, I’m doing public interest where most of the lawyers working in this area are alums from my school. but I like the perception of being seen as the smartest of the smartest, really. and like, I don’t doubt that if I had really tried I could’ve done it. I almost got into Emory which is a top 20 school, I got waitlisted, but like if I was seriously pursuing a highly ranked school I know I could’ve been a lot more effort into studying for the LSAT and I bet I could improve my score by a solid 10 points which would put me in range for at least the schools ranked #5 and up (that would put me at 169, the top 4 want more like 173, our of 180) so I could’ve gotten into Northwestern. my undergrad GPA would still leave something to be desired due to the disaster that was my junior year but there’s really not much I can do about that. oh well. anyway. I got to the campus and easily found the building we were supposed to be in. There were a few students standing/sitting around outside, it was only about 7:40 at this point and the “report no later than” time wasn’t until 8:30, so we had time. I waited outside for a bit before going inside and waiting in there until we were told to start lining up. Once we were lined up, we got led through a very complicated path between like 3 other buildings to get to the place where we were actually taking the test (it was very weird) and I was like how am I gonna remember to get out of here?? lol. so we got to the classroom and they had one person doing the check ins verifying our ID with our admission ticket and giving us a seat, so that took quite a while. I may have a bit of a conundrum when to came to signing the admission ticket. we were specifically instructed to bring an ID with a signature on it, and I was supposed to sign the admission ticket while holding the ID next to it, presumably to see if the signatures matched. well, the signature on my driver’s license is from when I was 16, literally 10 years ago, and needless to say it’s kind of evolved from there so my current signature looks nothing like that, but I needed them to match so I did my best to copy the old one and did a decent job I think. the issue then came when we were seated and had our scantrons, and they wanted us to sign the academic integrity pledge or whatever about not cheating and I’m like fuck, my signature on this is gonna need to match my signature on the bar, so I used my normal one, and I didn’t think it would be an issue until they were like “okay we’re collecting the admission tickets now” at which point I was like WELL FUCK but there’s not much I can do about it now. sigh. It took them a while to get everything set up but we kicked off around 9:40, two hour test, 60 multiple choice questions. It wasn’t too bad, there were a handful of questions I was just straight up like “huh” on but I’m betting a good number of them were the experimental questions and they won’t count towards our final score, so that makes me feel better. I finished around 11:15 and was allowed to leave, once they get to the last 15 minutes if you finish you have to wait till the end to leave, so I wanted to get out of there before that. Getting back to the main road was a bit of a challenge, I met up with a few other people I kinda knew and found our way there. I found the bus stop, where all I could do was wait, with no indication of when/if a bus was coming (the buses are really notoriously unreliable) so that was making me kind of anxious but a bus did come in about 10 minutes or so. the ride back was nice, halfway through I switched back to the first bus I was on in the morning and took that the rest of the way home. my stomach had been killing me for pretty much the entirety of the test, cause unknown, so I just kinda flopped on my bed and laid there for a little bit. When I got up I decided to make a grilled cheese for lunch since I had supplies for it, and I made a very delicious grilled cheese. I sat for a while and did some editing of blog posts for my dad’s lawyer website, and took a look at the first chapter of the book my mother is apparently writing, she wanted me to read it and edit it, and also give my thoughts, so I did that for a bit. I had been meaning to bake something now that I have some free time, and when I made macarons a few weeks back I had halved the recipe but when I was prepping the dry ingredients, combining them all and then running them through a food processor, I didn't realize till afterwards that I didn’t halve the ingredients so I had twice as much as I needed, so I had enough for another half batch, so I figured I’d use that up. Prepping and such went pretty smoothly, the killer ended up being me apparently running out of parchment paper (since when does that happen???) so I had to just grease the pan which like I know isn’t what you’re supposed to do for macarons, so they didn’t really do the whole thing where they rise and have the different texture on the bottom, just kinda cooked into flat disks. but I mean, they still tasted good, so that’s *really* what matters. I let them cool down before using the last of my homemade vanilla buttercream to fill them and put them together. So despite a few minor issues I was fairly satisfied with them. Somewhere around after that I switched from the kitchen table to the couch and watched some tv. I started finishing the last episode of orange in the black I’m gonna watch for now, I may go back to it at some point, we’ll see. From there I finally got around to watching the first 3 episodes of season 3 of Wynonna Earp and, MAN, do I have FEELINGS. I of course was spoiled about Dolls dying, but I honestly think I would’ve been more upset if I didn’t know it was coming. I’m still pissed though because he was such a great character that added so much to their group dynamic, and I always preferred Wynonna/Dolls to Wynonna/Doc, so now that she's basically just with Doc by default kinda sucks. but I watched those few and then a few episodes of 30 Rock before heading to bed. It’s not that late yet but I’ve been up since 6:30 and my body is saying SLEEP NOW so I’m gonna listen to it and end this here. Goodnight my dears. Hope you had a banging Saturday.