Tag Archives: advice

Advice for incoming Year 1s

1. You will be told that the first semester is a grade-free semester. All this means is that you spend December studying for exams in the first week of Sem 2. Do not slack off.
2. Assiduously write up case summaries, legal principles and rules, interpretation canons etc. You will be consumed with work from your Legal Writing Skills course, but those are skills you need to develop with time, and you also need to cram Contract Law inside your brain, because the exams are closed-book.
3. You will not understand the legal principles at first. It’s like building a jigsaw puzzle. You know that at the end, it’s supposed to resemble some basic grounding in contract law, but right now you have bits and pieces. Persevere. The big picture will come to you.
4. Torts is a bit easier in that I found it more intuitive, but you still need to know your tests for duty of care, remoteness, causation… that’s what hypothetical questions are for. Find a fact pattern in your case readings that fits the given hypo, apply apply apply.
5. I might be burned at some stakes for saying this, but CCAs don’t matter. They’re a proxy for showing that you are a well-rounded human being, and there are lots of other ways outside of NUS Law that can showcase this. Also, Pro Bono Group is only worth joining in Year 2 when your pro bono hours are actually counted towards the mandatory 20-hour quota. Joining in Year 1 may give you a leg up in finagling a position in Year 2, but it’s time that you could spend elsewhere. Elsewhere studying.
6. Seriously, don’t take “grade-free semester” at face value. You will regret it. Work just as hard as if you were still graded at the end of the sem, BECAUSE YOU ARE.
7. Don’t make so much noise in the library. Or elsewhere. The seniors hate it. (I’ve pinpointed the Year 1 tendency to travel in packs as the proximate cause)
8. Thai food at the Summit is pretty good. Drinks stall is a necessity and also pretty decent at remembering what faces go with what special orders. Be nice to them, the rest of the campus loves them and wants them to stay after the next round of vendor contracts is up.
9. Keep a (virtual) sticky note somewhere on your computer to write down things you liked or disliked about tutors or lecturers. Student feedback is your only time to point out their flaws to them anonymously, and having details helps you write constructive criticism instead of just rating them badly for what seems to be no reason at all. Conversely, don’t be shy to tell them that you enjoyed their lesson or that they cleared up something that had always muddled you – teachers live for moments like those.
10. Sometimes, it feels as if the deadlines will never end – you finish one memo only to have to start on a presentation and there’s a CCA event coming so you have to attend a meeting for that and oh my gahd will it ever end – rest assured that, the nature of time being what it is, the end will come and you will have to sit your exams, regardless. What you do in the time between now and the exams, that’s up to you. You can spend it stressing and complaining, or just getting down to the work, noses to grindstones… We just get through it one day at a time, and eventually we find that as we lob completed deadlines over our shoulder, the burden somehow seems lighter and we’re fired up for the final stretch. TL;DR: one day at a time, really. That was basically how I survived A-levels, and it’s what I do now.
11. Start applying for internships early. Like, one semester ahead early. I sent applications in late February only to be told that some firms had already met their internship quota for summer (and I can confirm this was not an alternative way of rejecting me). This isn’t to say, however, that internships are a must-have. For undergrads in their first year, y’all can afford to take one summer off to go on vacation. I only have 2 summers in which to fish for a training contract, so the time pressure is greater for me. But don’t get so hung up on internships that you forget to enjoy uni life, and that includes summer breaks. It’s more important to be a human.