Wednesday 9 April 2008

Everyone's Feeling the Pressure


Revision Hell It's that time of year again. The tension and pressure on us poor law students is so palpable you could almost reach out and grab hold of it. Yes, exams are looming, stretching ahead like a barren wasteland of doom, gloom, hard work, and sleepless night.  And by the time we're into May, sore-finger-itis sets in: our poor hands are left raw and cramping - a symptom of gripping pens too tightly and writing too much in too short a space of time. Revising becomes the number one objective and all of us get more than a little uptight, fraught and tetchy as the days of untold torture unravel. As our tempers get shorter and our patience evaporates, co-habiting with a revising law student can prove a living nightmare.


And let's face it: it's an awful time.  A time when we students can frequently be found in a semi-delirious state, chain smoking with strained, bloodshot eyes and tousled hair, slumped over textbooks and surrounded by reams of paper. And some people reckon that life as a law student is easy?!

So how are some of the ‘regulars’ bearing up?

Legal Lass admits to being 'in the revision zone' something we're all sadly well-accustomed with. At least she’s ‘in the zone’ though – more than some of us, I’m sure. She does, however, relish the opportunity of spending all day in her pyjamas.

Andro is feeling the exam-time squeeze and posted a picture of a bunny being bathed as an indication of her own expression after a gruelling exam. She's also finding the tedium of revising aspects of the Civil Procedure Rules a headache. I'm sure we can all sympathise with that.

ASP is still posting as frequently as ever it seems. He’s pushing out content 2 or 3 times a day on occasions and seems largely unperturbed by the impending exams. The guy’s just relentless in his posting.

Lacklustre Lawyer is not only struggling with an intense workload but seeking a burst of inspiration as to the career path he should choose. And boy, do I know what that’s like!

Susie Law School - (yes, who still doesn't like to Law Actually) second 'nudge nudge' of the year - is documenting the progress of her exams, LPC style. I stopped blogging about my experiences on the LPC long ago. It was bad enough living the experience without raking over the coals on Law Actually.

Law Girl has apparently gone to ground during this 'busy spell' for law students. Pretty sensible, if you ask me.

Minxy's posting frequency has dropped a little of late, a testament, no doubt to her gruelling workload and the pressing time of the year. As ever, though, the number of comments to her posts remains startlingly high!!

As for Law Actually - well, I'm hoping to keep my posting fairly frequent in the coming weeks. I eased off a little last year on both my blogs, although to be fair, Law Actually wasn't properly 'bedded in' at that point. But I abandoned F1 Central for the entire revision period. This year, it seems, I've more or less abandoned it full-stop.

9 comments:

  1. It's only when I'm away from Windows Live Writer that I'm reminded just how God damn awful and awkward the blogging process is in blogger via their browser interface.

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  2. I wonder what's it going to be like in the future, when every day is like an exam. ;D

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  3. P.s. You mean there isn't an online version of the live writer?!

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  4. I'm going to try and defend my frequent postings by saying that I've not got impending exams!

    With the compulsory/elective two-semester split, I think the main exams of the year have been and gone in February.

    Since then, I've had a grand total of three weeks of teaching. There's 9 weeks of elective teaching, so, at the minute, there's nothing to revise other than the general "consolidation" I occasionally think about.

    Mind you, when I'm on proper "study leave" I tend to blog more, as I've not got classes and preparation to distract me away the laptop...

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  5. Hi Law Actually,

    Nice to see you've been keeping up-to-date with my handling of the two demons: revision and career dilemma. Its certainly been a busy Easter break for me - which is coming to an end very shortly - and I think I haven't done too bad really but then there's always 'something else' that one could have done/could have done better. Time will tell.

    I read a post or a comment of yours recently where I think you were saying you are now interested in going into academia. Is that right?

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  6. I've tidied up this post which was in a shockingly sloppy state I noticed. Boy, do I miss Live Writer when I'm 'on the road' and away from one of my computers. Awful.

    I don't know about an online version of LW. I guess that kind of is 'blogger' but using it now just kills me. Maybe there's a portable app which I can when I'm blogging on the road instead, Andro. The portable version of Firefox is a great tool that I usually carry with me, but the public PCs I've been using recently are pretty awful and don't have USB 2.0 which means the apps are woefully slow to start up. As I'm only there very briefly I just use the frankly awful collection of software that's available on them. I mean, some are still running IE 5.5! Seriously.

    Lucky you, ASP, not having imminent exams. And I think it's great there's such a prolific poster amongst us. Good job!

    And yes, LL, I did recently admit that I'm steering more and more towards a career in academia. I'll probably throw a post up before long about exactly what I plan to do, going forwards.

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  7. Are those old machines at your LPC institution by any chance?

    Please tell me you are not blogging from there! :o

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  8. *emerges from darkened room in ragged clothes holding the remains of a whip and a badly chewed three legged stool, having attempted, once again and unsucessfully to tame the thesis monster*
    Heavy workload? Of COURSE - but I can cope. No, really, I can....
    ( *plunges back into darkened room dragging along the Gigantic Pink Tribble and the Gigglers and slams door shut*)

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  9. Poor Minxy. Wrestling the beast that is your 'thesis monster' must be quite something! :-|

    No, the antiquated computers I referred to Andro, aren't the ones by my LPC provider. They are thankfully very new and 'very gutsy' - a crucial criterion by which I measure the quality of any computer I use. :-)

    BTW: I have blogged from there before, Andro! In all fairness, however, I haven't done so for quite some time.

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