When the grass is greener on the other side . . .

I haven't blogged in a bit. Why (you ask, accusatorily)? We are nearing the end of finals, and this has been a hectic semester to say the least. I don't think there was one week where I didn't have a committee or some other sort of meeting every night after class, so it turned out to be pretty exhausting. Luckily I didn't feel it during the semester, but towards the end of the semester things start to wind down. The funny thing is that you usually don't know you're out of breath until you have time to stop and catch it. So, I haven't had the time to dedicate to a post (I don't like quick "drive-by" posts). Also, I didn't have time to step back and find any themes from the semester that would help the evening law student. Until now.

Finals bring out the crazy in all of us. By "us," I mean law students, both of the sunrise and sunset varieties (day and evening). Law school grades are based on one comprehensive exam at the end of each semester, and since the first year courses are graded on a curve, the competition ratchets up exponentially. You have to know as much as possible and be comfortable enough with the material that you can spew it out in a ridiculously short period of time. Recently a day student had the nerve to comment to me that I had the "luxury" of a full week between exams. I was ready to commit a tort.

In order to squeeze out time to devote to studying, my strategy has been to take off from work the two days preceding each final. This means that I work full days from Monday-Wednesday, and arrive home or go to school at night to study for a few hours, finish my outline, read as much as possible, then get ready to go to work. On Thursday I spend the entire day at school reading, reviewing, taking practice exams and letting the panic begin to set in. Same cycle for Friday except that I go home earlier, and the panic is full blown. In between, I'm checking my work emails and phone messages so that things don't back up on me too much. Some luxury!

Then it occurred to me that day students don't have it so great, either. While evening students may have images of them sipping lattes around a stack of treatises and discussing the finer points of the Law (capital L), that really isn't the case. Sure, they have more free time and a more flexible schedule throughout the day, but they are also expected to do a lot in less time. Plus, they may have only a day or two between exams, which ramps up the pressure. So, things are rough all over.

I guess the theme here is that when the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, it usually just means your neighbor uses a better brand of manure than you do. But, it's still manure.