It's Normal

Got a call from my 1L friend, heading into her second set of exams (they're on the quarter system at her school). She wanted to know whether it was normal to feel alternately anxious, depressed, listless, frantic, overconfident, apprehensive, unmotivated, and panic-stricken about upcoming exams. Yes, it's normal. Even in your second set. In fact, I told her that as law school progressed I had less anxiety, motivation and healthy stress about exams, and more of the listless/overconfident/panic-stricken/depressed cycle. Probably because exams are no longer the unfamiliar spectre they were first semester. This unfortunate spell is stretched out for five or six weeks during the bar exam preparation stage, and it's a pretty miserable way to be.

I don't really have a secret solution for it. (You know, they say that college is where you really learn how to study. I'm not sure I ever really did. And then law school is where you really learn how to think. Hmmmm.... ) The best I could tell my friend was that, yeah, it's normal. You are moderately anxious and set yourself an arbitrary goal: "I'm going to study for six hours on Saturday for Class X". And then it's 2 PM on Saturday and you're lounging over brunch reading the paper in complete denial, and then you feel like a miserable lundisciplined louse, but you still don't want to study. And then you finally sit down to study at 4:30 and you go "HOLY MOLY I DON'T KNOW EVEN A FRACTION OF THIS AND I DIDN'T LEAVE MYSELF ENOUGH TIME TO LEARN IT AND ALL THE SUCCESSES I'VE HAD BEFORE ARE GOING TO BE PROVEN AS THE LUCKY ACCIDENTS THEY REALLY ARE BECAUSE THIS TIME I REALLY AM A COMPLETE UNPREPARED IDIOT!" And then in this panicked hateful mode you study for about forty-five minutes or an hour and then notice that you've wandered off somewhere else in your head and are making a list of the sailing gear you really ought to buy for next summer and you think, maybe I need a break, or maybe I'm cracking up here, and you take a break and next thing you know it's 10 PM before you're sitting back down to study and the crazy panic sets in again.

This is totally normal, or at least it was for me....

Comments

[Cam Barker]

"ALL THE SUCCESSES I'VE HAD BEFORE ARE GOING TO BE PROVEN AS THE LUCKY ACCIDENTS THEY REALLY ARE BECAUSE THIS TIME I REALLY AM A COMPLETE UNPREPARED IDIOT!"

This is pretty common in law schools, as I can personally attest. The other day a professor told me it was called "imposter's syndrome." There are articles about it that can be found on Google.