Friday has traditionally always been an administrative day for me at work. It’s on Fridays that I get my paper work in order, make sure everything is filed and generally apply the principles of the clean desk philosophy. Part of that ritual involves me tuning to my favourite BBC Radio One on the internet and usually catching Pete Tong’s weekend intro show live from London and letting that play in the background while I sort everything out. Today I started a bit early and have been listening to a brilliant set by Paul Van Dyk, trance DJ extraordinaire, and it made me realise how I’ve had to leave many of the things that I enjoyed doing behind ever since I started law school.
Summer sessions for an evening law student are particularly onerous. With copious reading and a paucity of time, many of my classmates find ourselves in a real life ‘24′ constantly chasing the horological dragon. So how do we manage to get it all done and have some semblance of our pre-law identity back? Ridiculous amounts of discipline.
To paraphrase what my Torts professor said, if there’s anything you’ll get out of law school it’ll be the self-discipline. Discipline is a bitter pill to swallow for someone like myself that has been such a big procrastinator I would put off procrastinating (and consequently get things done). So what words of wisdom do I have for my fellow Lex-addicts?
Carrot & whip: When you’ve done what you were supposed to do, let your hair down, let yourself go get a drink with friends, spend time with loved ones -whatever makes you happy. Now here’s the hard part. When you don’t get your reading or outlining in, you’ve got to learn to setup consequences that you’re not thrilled with. Like foregoing leisure time or giving up a weekend outing. Hard, yes. Almost bi-polar schizophrenic, probably. Effective, absolutely.
