My last free weekend
That's what this feels like. I start law school on Monday.
It's not proper law school. In the Irish system, that comes later. The first thing I have to do is pass a bunch of exams showing that I already know the law. Yeah, it's a bit weird. You can take these exams without doing any classes for them, but that's widely considered a recipe for failure, so most people do a prep course. That's what I'm starting on Monday.
You have to do exams in eight subjects and pass all of them. Most people do them in at least two groups. At your first attempt, you have to take at least four exams and pass at least three. So you have to be a bit strategic about which subjects you take and when. I decided to do the exams in two groups of four. Starting with the four usually considered the easiest, just to make absolutely sure I make the minimum threshold for my first attempt. That's Property, Equity, Contract and Criminal. Assuming I pass them all (and the failure rate is about 50%, so I'm not taking it for granted!) then in the next session I'll do the remaining four - EU, Constitutional, Tort and Company. It may sound a bit mad to put all the "hard" ones together but I reckon I already have a head start since I did Tort in my paralegal class; I deal with EU and Constitutional in my current job; I dealt with Company in my previous job; and as an undergrad I studied Constitutional - American Constitutional, of course, but the similarities are greater than you might expect. Plus, there would be the opportunity to re-take any exams that I fail before I would be able to begin proper law school anyway.
I'm doing actual lectures for three of the classes. Criminal I have to do distance learning, since they re-scheduled the lectures either for late Friday night (no fucking way) or smack in the middle of Saturday afternoon. I'd arranged all my other classes for weekday evenings so that I could have the weekends entirely free to study and I'm not going to mess that up by taking a Saturday afternoon class. So it's distance learning for that one. I did Criminal in the paralegal course so I think I'll be fine.
It's exciting, but at the same time, I know I'm going to be absolutely miserable for the next few months because I will not have a life. At all.
Exams are in the beginning of April.
It's not proper law school. In the Irish system, that comes later. The first thing I have to do is pass a bunch of exams showing that I already know the law. Yeah, it's a bit weird. You can take these exams without doing any classes for them, but that's widely considered a recipe for failure, so most people do a prep course. That's what I'm starting on Monday.
You have to do exams in eight subjects and pass all of them. Most people do them in at least two groups. At your first attempt, you have to take at least four exams and pass at least three. So you have to be a bit strategic about which subjects you take and when. I decided to do the exams in two groups of four. Starting with the four usually considered the easiest, just to make absolutely sure I make the minimum threshold for my first attempt. That's Property, Equity, Contract and Criminal. Assuming I pass them all (and the failure rate is about 50%, so I'm not taking it for granted!) then in the next session I'll do the remaining four - EU, Constitutional, Tort and Company. It may sound a bit mad to put all the "hard" ones together but I reckon I already have a head start since I did Tort in my paralegal class; I deal with EU and Constitutional in my current job; I dealt with Company in my previous job; and as an undergrad I studied Constitutional - American Constitutional, of course, but the similarities are greater than you might expect. Plus, there would be the opportunity to re-take any exams that I fail before I would be able to begin proper law school anyway.
I'm doing actual lectures for three of the classes. Criminal I have to do distance learning, since they re-scheduled the lectures either for late Friday night (no fucking way) or smack in the middle of Saturday afternoon. I'd arranged all my other classes for weekday evenings so that I could have the weekends entirely free to study and I'm not going to mess that up by taking a Saturday afternoon class. So it's distance learning for that one. I did Criminal in the paralegal course so I think I'll be fine.
It's exciting, but at the same time, I know I'm going to be absolutely miserable for the next few months because I will not have a life. At all.
Exams are in the beginning of April.