Monthly Archives: August 2015

Advice I wish I could have given my younger selves

Age 15: The boys you see now will pale in comparison to boys you will meet in a couple of years. Don’t bother.

Age 18: Wear your retainer. When your wisdom teeth erupt and make the retainer an impossible fit, go back to your orthodontist and ask for a new retainer. You have to protect your parents’ investment in your dentition.

Age 19: Don’t apply to study psychology. Put in a bit more elbow grease even though A-Levels are over, and apply to law school.

Age 23: Buy hospitalisation insurance. Buy as much coverage as you can afford. Your employers are decent people, but they are also businessmen and they don’t owe you anything beyond a salary.

Age 24: Don’t go around meeting strangers from the internet unless you’ve been talking to them for a while.

Age 27: Don’t buy a car. Your friend is a decent person but not the best decision-maker around.

Age 28: Someone who relentlessly pursues you is not a person you need to pursue. Let them do the chasing, they prefer things that way.

Age 30: none of the above matters. You’re still alive, you’re in law school, things have turned out all right. Look forward, not back.

 

 

Need sleep and/or caffeine.

The cats have taken to waking me up at 6am, which is uncomfortably close to my actual alarm time of 7am. I can’t go back to sleep in case I oversleep and miss a lecture (or worse, a tutorial). I’ve been tanking all week but it’s Saturday now.

So what do I do instead of sleeping in? I sign up to spectate moots. In Chinatown. At 9 in the morning.

I kept yawning throughout the mock trial while fidgeting uncomfortably on the hard plastic chair. It took a lot of brainpower to keep up with the arguments without any visual aids.

After court adjourned for the judges to deliberate, I left to take the bus home. At least it was a direct bus, thank goodness for small mercies.

From here on out, I’m only signing my Saturdays away if I stand to benefit significantly.

Week 1: Impostor plus maxima

Tuesday and already there’s notes in my mailbox for contract law.
Went to the library but not to study – was obtaining readings because I couldn’t secure any 2ndhand textbooks. Given the cost of books, I might just borrow all the way.

Wednesday and I’m rushing readings while eating leftover pizza because the queues at The Summit are too long and my time is too precious.

Thursday and I screw up by being slightly late for tutorial as well as giving the wrong definition of “verdict”. The answer was actually in my readings but I hadn’t got that far.

We find the rest of our GLB cohort and all 10 of us have now been added to the group.

Popped over to UTown with other students to explore student life options and we were all late for the Contract Law lecture, which may have prompted a response from the no-nonsense lecturer. She told off a couple of students for talking, so I will have to watch my motormouth.

As advice, she told us that everyone has Impostor Syndrome in the first few weeks. I probably feel it more than most, since I only got offered a place on my second try. I was so anxious that they might have made a mistake selecting me over some other candidate. I’m never going to believe that I was better than someone who was shortlisted with me – if there was the space I’m sure they would have loved to take all 800 shortlisted candidates. So I can’t let my status go to my head cos now everyone is just as good as I am.