A jaunt through my imagination, which rests in a certain degree of reality, if you will allow me:
Well obviously we got a punk law student in the library. They trolling around between stacks, snatching your books, tearing up yo’notes and just causing chaos to your already crazy law school life. So you need to hide yo’highlighters, hide yo’books, hide yo’self so you don’t get snatched up by them punk law student forcing you to do a tortious act. You might just find me purposefully committing a harmful act upon said punk law student’s body through a volitional movement of my arm as my fingers are clenched in a fist formation and I give that punk law student a menacing look with my eyes and yell out “you deserve this smack across yo’face you punk law student.” Obviously there is no defense to that besides protecting my chattel from conversion.
Those stories you hear about the brutality of law students punk-ish behavior- somewhat true. Well you have all sort of folks in law school. But recently I could not but wonder if I had finally met that tell tale sign of law school- the criminally desperate acts carried out by law students to stay ahead of the curve. I will spare you the details here, plus I have vowed to not focus on that grading aspect of law school beyond knowing what I need to do to achieve, but people are ruthless.
I want to say that it wasn’t intended, this behavior I encountered, but I might be painting myself to naive. I just feel like people should deserve the benefit of the doubt, but once my good faith has been lost there is nothing that can win over my loyalty (I tried searching for Pride and Prejudice in the law library but did not find it.)
One of the classes we have is Legal Writing, all I will say about that class right now is that its like Chemistry Lab, required pain in the ass. I am sure I will come up with some optimistic twist for how that class is important, but right now there is not much good will for towards it. For this class you get to learn the tools of law- research, legal memo writing, citing, distinguishing and analgozing.
The classes are divided up into sections- like 4 sections of 200 1L’s, who are then broken up into smaller legal writing classes of say 15 each. Essentially all theses smaller legal writing classes are doing the same assignment but they have different components or aspects assigned to them, the end result being you will need all the same books for the most part regardless whose class your in. This is where the competition gets brutal.
I went in and finished most of my research early in the week. I left the harder more involved stuff for later because, well, I got lazy. BAD FREAKING IDEA. I came back and my books had disappeared. I couldn’t locate them the next day. The following day I came back and found some books but others were not to be found. I had maybe 2 hours of assignment left, it took me four hours more then it should have. I had to come up with creative ways to do the research in order to get by without the specific books I needed and not resort to the online research because my books were not to be found (I guess to understand this statement you need to understand the ethical stuff about law school and also specifically the stricter legal writing standard we are supposed to uphold). What was terrible to see were people who had started the assignment late, they were screwed. Eventually the books materialized, but it was bad news bear for folks. Sometime in my disdain for folks heartlessness and disregard to the sanity of others I went looking for Jane Austin.
Lessons from law school- don’t freaking procrastinate, stay on top of your stuff and finally become a kick butt researching sleuth or find an good attorney because you will be committing a whole bunch of tortious activity. (Also, to my recollection nothing was stolen, no books were damaged, I merely was exaggerating in order to entertain myself- but I hear some law schools foster that sort of environment.)
Corner Office Shaikh 
Ack, that sounds terrible!
My undergrad was kind of cutthroat so it wasn’t so much books, but cubicles were much contested over.
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That is horrible! I think in general secondary and post secondary education in this country is going to get ubber competitive and its going to change the education system in ways that probably will be bad for students, bad for American society and probably pretty bad for the “have nots”- and I don’t just mean minorities here, but anyone who doesn’t have the necessary whatever it is to get to college, stay in college and succeed in college.
But that is besides the point, you I notice are studying for the LSAT, bummer! That thing is a beast and you probably heard this already, it has absolutely no application in law school, from my experience thus far i have found no correlation, but maybe when i mature into a 2L and 3L i might change my opinion. But regardless best of luck on your endeavor down the LSAT (black) hole!
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Affad, this just sounds like you lost your books, and it was not some malice intent of someone trying to steal your books- hence the omission of details. Common sense should dictate that you should not leave your possessions unattended unless you ask a trustworthy person nearby to watch your items.
As a third year law student, i have heard of those law school horror stories but fortunately i have never experienced anything like that. In fact I have experienced a level of camaraderie that was very humbling. People were generous and sharing. When the bookstore ran out of books, students were allowing their friends to make copies.
But procrastination is definitely a deathly behavior to adopt in law school- you wont be able to procrastinate too much because you’ll fail out if you keep it up! Sorry to be so harsh but unless you’re some kind of genius you have to really study and focus and start early. Always! InshaAllah I really hope you succeed in this endeavor. Looking forward to more of your blog posts, but dont use the blogs to avoid your reading/writing.
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