The Girl's Guide to Law School®
Get In, Get Through, Stay You
Alexandra graduated from Suffolk University Law School in 2017 and passed the UBE in all 29 states, not that anyone’s counting. She has a bachelors from Florida International University in English Literature with concentrations in Psychology and Creative Writing. In addition to working on her first novel, she works part time consulting in laboratory compliance.
This week we welcome back guest writer Alexandra Muskat to talk about the best way to go about choosing your 2L classes for next year.
When you first start law school, you are required to take a specific set of classes – criminal law, contracts, civil procedure, legal writing and research, property law, constitutional law, and torts. But, towards the middle of your second semester 1L, you’ll be able to pick your own classes for the following year. [Read more…]
This week we welcome back guest writer Alexandra Muskat to talk about how to work on creating the life you want later on.
Have you ever heard of The Secret? It’s a lovely movie, and book, that came out in the early 2000s. It states that anything you want, you can have, just by manifesting it. This idea is not new, it’s been touted for thousands of years in different ways by nearly every religion. There are multiple books and tapes (yes I said tapes) on the subject, and it all boils down to if you build it, they will come.
Why is manifesting the life you want important for law school? Because law school is inherently negative. We are battered by not feeling good enough, trying to compete with our classmates, and worrying over the future career we hope to have. It is very easy to get bogged down by this negativity, anxiously slog our way through school and the bar exam, only to start a career and inevitably feel overwhelmed and burned out.
This week we welcome back guest writer Alexandra Muskat to talk about why therapy can be an important aid for any law student.
There is a certain kind of person that goes to law school. They want to change the world, they hope to make a lot of money doing it, and, or, they want to impress their family. They are hard workers, very driven, and meet the demands of law school with outward ease and inward anxiety. Now, there are always a few outliers – those who went to law school to change the world and are calm and collected, outwardly and internally, without a care for grades or the bar exam. [Read more…]
This week we welcome back guest writer Alexandra Muskat to talk about coming up with a system for time management that works for you!
I have a unique love affair with time management and multitasking. It started as a child and crescendoed as an adult when I became a nanny to a high level executive’s three rambunctious, adorable, intelligent boys. There is nothing quite like figuring out how to juggle graduate school courses (I had a stint attempting an MLA in Gothic Literature), working on your own novel, and meeting the needs of a two year old who constantly attempted dangerous trapeze acts.
It was during that time that I figured out how to manage my days in blocks of time, and I took that efficiency method into law school and bar exam prep. Having your time blocked out, or following any of the time efficiency methods below, gives you structure and allows you to not feel overwhelmed, which in turn, helps you get more done.
This week we welcome guest writer Alexandra Muskat to talk about handling criticism from a professor and bouncing back.
Early in my law school career, namely first year, first semester, about halfway through, we had a civil procedure midterm. Up until this point, I hated law school. I felt like everyday my schedule would shift, or swell. I felt overwhelmed by everything; I hated taking the train in and out of Boston, and my weekends were filled with a noxious amount of anxiety.
Then this midterm approached. I can still remember staring at the essay question and my blank page on Examsoft and thinking, “What the heck am I doing with my life?” [Read more…]
This week we welcome back guest writer Alexandra Muskat to talk about balancing a social law and law school – it can be done!
It can be extremely hard to balance having a social life and being in law school. I witnessed this a lot in law school and found that there are two types of law students: those that party too much, and those that don’t let themselves have a break.
When I was in school, I fell somewhere in the middle. I was a bit older than my classmates, and I really enjoyed both my alone time and my family time. But I knew a lot of individuals who fell into both categories. My friends tended to fall into the “party too much” category, always attending every social function with the same fervor as they would have on a night out in Boston when they were 19.
I had a very regimented approach to balancing school and social activities: I micromanaged my time so efficiently that I knew how many hours I could take off to hang out with people and still get enough sleep to be able to study or go to school the next day. I micromanaged my balancing act, and it worked out very nicely. I rarely had FOMO (fear of missing out), and I always had all my work done. Win-win.
This week we welcome back guest writer Alexandra Muskat to talk about dealing with the adjustment to law school as a 1L.
The first few weeks of law school are over for many of you, and I’m sure that the “out-of-water” feeling is starting to set in. When I first started school, I was totally overwhelmed by the feeling that something was wrong. I had a tremendous amount of anxiety and couldn’t comprehend why I had decided to put myself through this experience. I also had an incredible bout of imposter syndrome – I constantly felt like someone was going to pull off the shroud around me and decree to my classmates that I was a fraud. [Read more…]
We welcome back guest writer Alexandra Muskat to discuss mental health in law school and some advice for keeping yourself mentally healthy during the stressful time that is law school.
Nothing about law school has stayed with me more than the comments I got when I was applying to school. My roommate’s response was, “Why? It’s like supposed to be…awful.” Then, a few weeks after I sent my application in, I spoke to a friend who was a first year, and she told me she was dropping out after one semester. The anxiety and depression had just become too much for her, and she wasn’t willing to continue the downward spiral.
To say these remarks scared the crap out of me, and added to the fear I had about starting law school, is an understatement. I don’t think I can actually do it justice. My first year was fraught with anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts. It’s hard for me to admit that my mind spent time in that dark place, but I think it’s important to be upfront about the emotional struggle I went through in law school because it ultimately led me to the path I’m on.
We welcome back guest writer Alexandra Muskat, to talk about positivity in law school and why it can help you in your law school career.
Even before law school starts, you will have been inundated with messages from people in your life telling you how hard law school is – how hard the curve can smack you down, how scary cold calling is, how grades can make or break your career, and how ridiculous the bar exam feels. Then you start school, and it’s just as hard as these people made it out to be. [Read more…]
This week we welcome back guest writer Alexandra Muskat to discuss how to use your time during the summer to start out on the right foot in the fall as a law student.
In undergrad, we generally spend our summers working and relaxing, but when you get to law school, you learn that your summer should be used more wisely. I don’t know if “wisely” is really a good way to put it – what I mean is, summers should be used to reset for the following year.
