Law school ailments. Although you probably won’t find these in a medical book, you’ve probably experienced them at some stage during your law degree. Read on and discover some of the ailments law school can and will inflict on us all…
Unfortunately I don’t see a way of preventing this ailment – a career in law is only going to encourage a penchant for the latest trendy caffeine-laden product.
Exam Hand
We probably need that much caffeine to remain perky while suffering from that indescribable pain that haunts us twice a year: exam hand. Seeing your classmates’ faces suddenly erupt into flushed red, pain-stricken grimaces and watching their hands kick into overdrive is enough to make your own hand feel empathy pains… if it doesn’t already feel like your thumb is going to fall off.
Venting
What really goes on inside the head of a law student is beyond me. That scares me, because I am one. Law students like to juggle a lot of commitments, and the intense concentration and constant pressure can do strange things to your mind.
The multitude of stresses that we face as law students sometimes means we just want to vent quite suddenly and loudly. Once, during a post-exams chill out, a friend of mine suddenly started screaming incomprehensibly. Turns out she’d just remembered the pain her lecturer had caused by giving her a giant pre-exam scare. The lecturer misrepresented a crucial part of the exam in a response to an email question, less than a day before. I must have been suffering a bit of stress at the time too, because I broke into hysterical laughter at her predicament. I may have been hit after that.
Correction Addiction
Nearly all law students I know have a constant need to correct people. I learned the hard way that correcting people doesn’t make you any friends. I was sure that I was justified in telling a contributor to Law School Memes that their Tuberville v Savage meme doesn’t make any sense. Of course, I then had to justify to those sitting around me in the law library that it was necessary to take up the argument in the first place. It's a nasty downward spiral from there.
Soon, you’ll be standing by the TV, yelling at a current affairs programme and giving post-facto legal advice to the unfortunate subject of the report. That is when you’ll realise law is creeping into your daily life. Worst of all, when dealing with a family argument, I’ve subconsciously employed the IRAC model.
What kinds of weird ailments has law school inflicted on you? How do you and your friends pull through?
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