Work-life balance keeps first-year student sane

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In law school, there’s a saying that goes: “The first year, they scare you to death; the second year, they work you to death; and the third year, they bore you to death.” As a first year, I can’t personally speak for two-thirds of that statement, but I can definitely attest to the first portion. Day one seems innocent enough – everyone’s getting to know each other and the wonders of this magical land they call law school – but that quickly changes. Tomorrow’s readings are exponentially greater than today’s, professors assign additional assignments and projects on top of your usual class preparation, and students whisper about how strenuous so-and-so’s final exam is. What results is tension and anxiety that’s thicker than your casebooks.

It seems overwhelming at times, but unless you’re some superhuman law school demigod, constantly pushing forward isn’t sustainable. To keep yourself from burning out, you have to take care of yourself mentally and physically. Thankfully, student organizations at KU Law offer numerous social outlets for de-stressing, from pub crawls to charity events. However, sometimes I just need time to myself, to do the things I enjoy, so I can better focus on the week ahead.

Books

It sounds counterintuitive, but with all the reading I’m doing for classes, recreational reading helps me sane. After reading so many early-20th century cases, I sometimes find myself speaking what I’ve been reading. You know you’re in deep when you talk about “the motley stuff of life” or “hooting throngs,” only to receive weird looks from non-law school friends. Reading things that aren’t heavily steeped in legalese helps keep my vocabulary, and sanity, in check.

So, what to read? Well, it really depends on the individual. I grew up reading comic books, and keeping up with that has helped immensely. Every other Wednesday, I head into town to catch up on the latest issues of “Batman” and “The Walking Dead.” Law school seems like its own planet sometimes, so immersing myself in another world – whether it’s Gotham City or a post-apocalyptic America – comes as a much-needed relief to a hard week’s work. Being a philosophy and international relations junkie, I also subscribe to magazines like “The Economist” and “Foreign Affairs,” which also helps keep everything in perspective.

Food

When case readings and outlining dominates your schedule, it sometimes becomes difficult to maintain a decent diet. Take this past week, for example: with a seminal first year writing assignment due at week’s end, I found myself eating out all week. Not that it’s a problem – Lawrence offers a plethora of delicious and healthy options – but sometimes, I crave homemade food.

After so many years of living on my own, I was getting tired of constantly getting burgers and ordering pizza (believe me, you’ll have plenty of pizza in law school), so I began cooking for myself. Now, I make it a point to cook something new each week: sushi bowls, cucumber salads, roasted pork, and so on. It doesn’t have to be anything complex, either, just doing something that’s different from my daily routine helps break the monotony that builds up over the semester.

Gaming

In keeping with my nerdiness, I also play “Magic: The Gathering” competitively. Magic is a card game where players compete with cards representing fantastical creatures and spells; however, underneath its fantasy flavor is a comprehensive game about logic and numbers. Much like chess, players have limited resources and are faced with a finite set of choices each turn; winning simply means being able to manage your resources better than your opponent can.

Being able to mentally engage this way is not only refreshing after a long week of digesting cases, but it also fosters decision-based critical thinking skills that I’m told employers love. I play whenever my schedule allows: sometimes that means several games online as a study break, while other times, that means traveling around the region to play in person. The point is simply to channel your stress elsewhere, and if that happens to benefit your law school career, all the better.

Now what?

The takeaway isn’t to specifically read or cook or play, but rather to find something you enjoy. Experiencing life outside of Green Hall is necessary to truly appreciate what the school has to offer. So, don’t be afraid to take time to care for yourself today so that you can walk into Green tomorrow ready to go.

If you happen to see me around Green, feel free to stop by for a chat!

— Steven Wu, 1L, is a KU Law Student Ambassador. Contact him at steven.wu@ku.edu

Snapping shots, stopping stress

Many law students have their own unique ways of relaxing and decompressing after a long day. For some, running at the gym is the best kind of medicine. For others, dancing or singing takes the edge off. For me, taking photos is the best way to dissociate myself from the stress that unfortunately accompanies the end of the semester and finals.

Lawrence is a little city with a huge history and wonderful architecture. It’s easy to find photo-worthy buildings, especially on the University of Kansas’s main campus, which is widely considered one of the most beautiful campuses in the nation. For me, though, the best places to take photos are in Lawrence’s vibrant downtown, and in my own home – a 104-year-old beauty, surrounded by even older homes with even more history.

For those of you who don’t know, Lawrence was established in 1854 and was a center of antislavery sentiment. Lawrence’s strong push to keep Kansas a free state created many enemies among surrounding territories. One of Lawrence’s most well-known events took place in 1863, during the Civil War. William Quantrill, a Missourian Confederate guerrilla, led a raid in Lawrence and burned most of the houses and buildings in Lawrence and killed between 150 and 200 men and boys.

The raid delayed the opening of KU until September of 1866. The townspeople lacked funding because they were forced to rebuild their city rather than pay for the university. Downtown Lawrence today has many reminders of the raid, and Lawrence embraces the tragedy as part of Lawrence’s and KU’s rich history. Today, Lawrence has a quirky, quaint, quiet (except on game days) downtown that is lovely to look at and even more enjoyable to photograph.

Laura Hill, 3L, is a KU Law Student Ambassador. Contact her at jayhawklaura@gmail.com.

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED: Volunteer work at El Paso nonprofit helps prepare duo for bilingual practice in KC

Editor’s note: Zach Roberson and Carlos Hernandez are 2012 graduates of the University of Kansas School of Law. Following the bar exam and a short internship, they will be opening a law firm in Olathe, Kan. In a series of blog posts, they will record the steps they take as they move past graduation and the bar exam and toward their goal of starting their own firm. They are pictured in the back row, fifth and sixth from left, respectively.

Zach: I hope everyone will excuse the length of time that has elapsed since our last blog post, but Carlos and I have been extremely busy preparing to start our firm. In our last posting, we mentioned that Carlos and I were studying for the Missouri and Kansas bar exams, respectively, and I’m pleased to say that we both passed. Shortly after we decided to go forward with the firm, we recognized that we absolutely HAD to do well on the bar exam; after all, it would be difficult for us to provide the Kansas City community with quality bilingual legal assistance if we are not licensed to practice law. Simply put, we had too many people counting on us and rooting for us – family, friends, and potential clients – to do poorly. I believe that this added pressure helped push us to study harder and prepare more completely. Doing well on the bar exam certainly requires a great deal of work, but it’s nowhere near impossible. Devote two months to intensive study, and celebrate when it’s over.

Carlos: The past few months have been pretty interesting. I started working at Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services of El Paso (DMRS) two weeks after the bar exam. DMRS helps more clients than any other nonprofit organization in western Texas and eastern New Mexico.  Although DMRS handles many complex immigration cases, it really didn’t take too long for me to get used to the office because I had interned there last summer. Zach joined me a month later, and he caught on pretty quickly as well. DMRS is divided into three different units: trial, residency, and naturalization. Zach and I worked in the Trial Unit, where we screened potential clients for possible representation and represented current clients in Immigration Court. For the most part, we assisted clients with (1) cancellation of removal cases, (2) asylum claims, and (3) adjustment of status cases. Although Zach and I handled different cases, we were able to work together to help each client obtain the best possible relief.

My most memorable case involved a Mexican citizen with legal permanent residency status in the United States. He contacted DMRS and asked for help in October after the government placed him in removal proceedings for a drug possession conviction that occurred nearly 15 years earlier. Unfortunately, federal statute imposes mandatory detention on aliens who are removable for drug crimes, which meant that he was not eligible to bond out of the detention center. This upset his family very much. Sometimes an attorney’s most important jobs is listening to and reassuring a client and his or her loved ones. We worked hard to prepare the client for his individual merits hearing before the immigration judge, who ruled in our client’s favor and allowed him to stay in the U.S. Nothing is more rewarding than seeing a thankful family after trial.  

Volunteering at DMRS and handling our own cases with the help of seasoned immigration attorneys has been really helpful. I’m confident that the time Zach and I spent at DMRS has prepared us to help clients on our own.  

Zach: My time at DMRS was amazing. I can’t think of a better way for an attorney to learn a particular area of the law than to volunteer at a nonprofit organization for a few months. Ciudad Juàrez-El Paso is one of the busiest entry points in the world, with thousands of people crossing the border in both directions every day. As you might imagine, many of these people are in desperate need of immigration assistance. Because DMRS provides a wide array of services within the penumbra of immigration law, Carlos and I were able to handle many different types of cases and help clients of many different nationalities and backgrounds. Many of these clients had nowhere else to turn for help. I particularly remember working on an asylum claim for a young Somali man who had endured unspeakable violence in his home country. I visited him at the detention center several times a week and helped him prepare for his asylum hearing. At the conclusion of his case, he handed me a heartfelt letter thanking me for helping him during such a difficult time. I can’t begin to describe how rewarding that was.

Volunteering at DMRS allowed us to gain valuable experience and work on a wide variety of immigration cases. Perhaps most importantly, volunteering allowed us to experience the satisfaction of working closely with clients to solve their problems.  When we open Hernandez and Roberson LLP in March, I know we’ll be ready.

Previous posts in the “Road less traveled” series:
Bar exam next hurdle in journey to firm ownership (July 2, 2012)
Trio to chronicle transition from law students to firm owners (May 8, 2012)

First-year law student, second-year wife


In my experience, the transformation from everyday person to law school student is oddly similar to getting married. You think you know exactly what you’re doing and how to succeed, and a month in you realize you really have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. When I was 22, I had no idea how to be a wife. I had never given it much thought. I spent most of my life exercising my independence and focusing on my priorities, and I was NOT focused on learning how to communicate or fight fair.

Before I married my husband, I used my oven for storage. I thought the only cleaning solutions I really needed in my apartment were Glass Plus and Febreze. “Cooking” dinner involved take-out or the microwave, and I did laundry only after I had worn everything in my closet. Once, when he returned from a month-long training for the Army, he walked into our apartment building while on the phone with me and told me how awful it smelled. I didn’t have the heart to tell my fiancé, who had been gone for a month, that the smell was coming from my apartment. It wasn’t until he walked in that I was forced to explain that the meal I had intended to cook for us (using the microwave) involved adding water – and I had sort of, kind of forgotten that part. I’m pretty sure when he left for his second deployment to Iraq, my husband was more concerned that I would attempt to bake something while he was gone than concerned for his safety in a war zone.

Needless to say, I was never going to win the wife-of-the-year award. I wish I could say that two years later my skills in the kitchen have improved, but that would be a lie. I did learn to suck less, though. I spoke with wise married women, and while I still can’t bake a cake to save my life, I know how to better maintain a happy, healthy marriage. It helps that my husband was always ready to put out the fires (literally, he had to put out a fire once) when things got out of control. He is the most patient man on the planet. When I decided to go to law school, he didn’t even flinch. We were both aware of the massive amount of time and money a law degree would take, and all he did was buy me an LSAT prep book. Being married is a lot easier when you’re married to someone awesome, seriously.

I was a pretty good student in college, and I walked into the law school building thinking I had it under control. Just a few short years and I’d be off living my dream of practicing law, and I would either have enough money to buy all the desserts I wanted or be so busy I’d have an excuse to never, ever turn on my oven again. Two weeks into the summer session, I realized I might be in over my head. The classes were tough, the reading could have been in a foreign language, and I wasn’t instantly good at it. I could deal with sucking at cooking, but I simply could not handle sucking at school. So I just kept going. There were days I didn’t want to. There were moments it seemed pointless, but there were also days when the information clicked and it made sense – moments when I didn’t have to struggle to understand a concept and the information being shoved into my brain began to make sense.

I’m a first-year law student and a second-year wife, and my priority is to not suck at either of them. It is a delicate balance. Sometimes the scales tip and I end up doing one better than the other, but thankfully my husband is more forgiving than my professors. I’ve learned I have to be able to turn my “student” brain off when I’m spending time with my husband. And sometimes I have to turn off being a wife and focus on being a law student. I’ve heard the stories and read the statistics about how difficult it is to make a marriage work while one spouse is in law school. I’ve also spoken with friends who are married, in law school, and struggling with the same things I am and who manage to wake up every day and keep making it work. I think it’s probably like that with any relationship while you’re here. In my experience, becoming a 1L is a lifestyle change, and while it may not be the smoothest of transitions, at least in my case, it helps me tremendously to have someone in my corner.

My life is a lot different than those of my single friends at KU Law. I have someone else to consider in both allocating my time and financially. I try to get on campus early and work in the mornings so if I have time, I can hang out with my husband in the evenings. I wake up early on weekends to study so we can do things together on the days he is free. The closer it gets to finals, the less I see him and although that is tough, I truly feel the end justifies the means. It will be worth it. I know it sounds cheesy, but I have learned that as long as we operate as a team, I can be successful at both things. I can be a good wife AND a good law student. It just takes a lot of effort, a lot of practice and a very patient partner.

— Ashlyn Lindskog, a first-year law student, is a KU Law Student Ambassador. Contact her at ashlynlindskog@gmail.com

Election Day captures KU’s unwaveringly inclusive spirit

When my siblings and I were growing up, my mother – being the socially prudent and impeccably mannered woman that she is – instructed us to never, under any circumstances, engage new acquaintances on the topic of politics. She knew that likelihood of your ideologies conflicting and directing your relationship into cold and isolated waters far outweighed the chances that you could harmoniously discuss the most important matters of the day. And outside of her semi-frequent urges to blow off ten dollars-worth of steam at the penny slots, my mother is simply not a chance-taking woman, particularly when the chip on the table is a relationship.

Like most college students, I only sparingly heeded my mother’s advice. I am a politics junkie and rather anti-authoritarian by nature, so hot-button issues became a part of my daily discourse (sorry Mom). In undergrad, I often felt hard-pressed to find students who actually cared about current events or felt inclined to exercise their civic responsibilities. Those young people who shared my viewpoints became my closest friends, while those who disagreed with me were kept a safe distance away (always plotting the demise of our great nation, I unfairly presumed). Between the large size of most undergraduate institutions and the availability of niche blogs and ultra-partisan news sources, it is easy to entrench yourself with only those perspectives that concur with your own.

But law school presented a new challenge. To be sure, law school draws students of all backgrounds and ideologies and value systems, and KU is no different. Moreover, given KU Law’s small class size, it is rather difficult to avoid someone with a different perspective for any extended amount of time. Whether it is in the stacks, a classroom, or in the commons, there aren’t many places to hide.

Armed with this knowledge going in, I referred back to my mother’s advice. The prospect of going to bat against another student who planned on making a career out of argumentation seemed like a bad move. And given that I knew nobody when I started the program, I wanted to remain on positive grounds with my classmates. Ironically, so did everyone else. Their mothers must have given them the same lectures that mine did.

However, Election 2012 quickly proved to be too tempting for any of us, and student groups began holding debate watch-parties on weeknights and having presentations about voter-ID laws and free-speech rights. And while respect should be the expectation for all people at all times, KU Law students intentionally stepped even further into the foray of progress and understanding: following the watch-parties and presentations, there was always genuine inquiry into other perspectives, followed by honest, fruitful debate. My mother, although probably apprehensive at first, would have been impressed.

When election night finally came around, there was buzz in Green Hall. Anxiety levels (from fear of future and fear of finals) were high, and people were itching to leave the building to go watch the coverage. The election watch-parties were tense, too, with students frantically Facebooking and Tweeting the release of precinct results from races and initiatives across the country. When our non-Kansan classmates received news from back home that their favorite candidate had found victory or faced defeat, we rallied around them in excitement or disappointment.

When marriage initiatives passed for the first time ever in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington, and when Tammy Baldwin became the United States’ first openly gay senator, there was celebration for the LGBT students and allies for whom this moment meant so much. And when it was announced that Barack Obama had been reelected to a second term, regardless of students’ political affiliation or voting record or opinion of the result, there was a common sense of solidarity that we had ultimately achieved the audacious dream that our Founders had envisioned. Most importantly, we did it together.

Experiencing the 2012 election season as a KU Law student reminded me of how political discourse and the democratic process are supposed to function. It isn’t about being “right” or winning the debate or even having your candidate or issue prevail at the end of the day. It’s about understanding and working with the diverse perspectives that exist in all corners of the nation. It’s about celebrating historic civil rights victories that ultimately may have no effect on you. It’s about remembering that we are a nation founded on the principle, “Out of many, one.”

So, too, is the University of Kansas School of Law. Election Day made me proud to be an American and a Jayhawk.

— Jake McMillian, a first-year law student, is a KU Law Student Ambassador. Contact him at jmcmillian@ku.edu

A glimpse into the high-stress world of Planet OCS: from Marine to law student

No joke, stepping off that bus was like stepping into another dimension. Behind you was the world you knew: you were familiar with this world, you had a pretty good idea how it worked and you thought you were pretty badass for it. But once your foot left the bus and landed on that hot asphalt known as Brown Field — also known as Officer Candidate School (OCS) for the United States Marine Corps — you knew you were no longer in the world that you knew and loved.

Indeed, OCS is an environment unique unto itself, kinda like its own planet. Planet OCS – yeah that works. On Planet OCS there are no smiling faces and no one to help you find your way; instead it is populated by stern faces that have an inability to understand the idea of patience, or excuses. They’re basically the exact opposite of Walmart greeters. By the end of the first day you’ve been assigned to a platoon with 40 or so other dudes who are going to be more or less joined at your hip for the next 10 weeks.

The first few days of OCS consisted mainly of standing in line, getting gear issued, medical exams, and filling out mountains of paperwork; it wasn’t grueling by any means, just boring. As boring as it was, I remember looking back fondly on those days, mainly because as soon as your “in-processing” was finished your training could properly begin. This event is known as pick-up day. Pick-up day is when you meet your Platoon Staff for the first time; these are the men that will be responsible for molding you into Marine Officers. They lack any sense of sympathy or compassion for you; in fact they want you to fail, they try and make you fail, and the only way to communicate with them is by yelling at the top of your lungs.

A quick word on yelling: We’re not talking about yelling like you would at a football game or at a rock concert.  No, no, my friend. Yelling in the Marine sense means yelling as if your life depended on it, yelling so hard you feel like your veins in your neck are going to burst.

So after your cordial introduction to your platoon staff you start training. The main purpose of OCS is to train, screen, and evaluate each candidate for the potential to lead Marines. This is accomplished by constantly putting candidates in high stress situations. From the moment the lights come on at zero-five hundred till they go out at twenty-one hundred you are under a microscope.  Everything you do during the day is being observed and recorded in some way. Let me put it to you this way: Everything you do, literally every-frickin-thing is done a certain way: how your gear is stored, your posture in the chow hall, the way your rack is made, and so on. If you’re not doing it the right way, you are promptly called out and “counseled” by a member of your platoon staff.

The first few weeks can be surmised as living in a state of chaos. The easiest way to create chaos was to give your platoon a lot of tasks and not nearly enough time to complete them. Being under a “time-hack” creates a lot of stress especially when you know that there’s a drill instructor just waiting for you to fail. Basically you have no idea what’s going on. There were mornings where I would get chewed out so bad that I would have spittle on my face from being “counseled,” and I’d only been awake for three minutes. It seems like no matter what you do, it’s never right and you end up paying for it.

The surprising thing is that you actually get used to living on Planet OCS. You learn the routine, you learn from your mistakes and you figure stuff out. Once you start to see how OCS works, you realize that everything is done at OCS for a very specific purpose. The lack of sleep, the long hikes, the brutal physical workouts — it’s all done for a reason: to see if you can lead when you are completely worn out physically, mentally, and perhaps even emotionally. That’s what being a Marine is all about.

In the final weeks of OCS, I began to notice the change in myself and those around me. Without a doubt, OCS was the hardest thing that I had ever gone through, and to make it to the other side in one piece as a Second Lieutenant is a very empowering feeling. Not only that, but now I have a job waiting for me when I graduate. That’s a pretty good feeling to have as a 2L.

There’s a lot to this story that I left out. Some of it was intentional (there’s a lot that goes on at OCS, so if you really want to know you’re gonna have to go there yourself to find out), but it’s mostly because I have spent enough time on this blog and need to get back to working on things that I am going to get graded on.

So anyway, take it easy and I’ll probably see you around Green.

‘Rah, — Zak

— Zak Beasley, a second-year law student, is a KU Law Student Ambassador. Reach out to him at mckibbon@ku.edu.