Outlining
Whoo hoo, congrats to me and all of the other 1Ls out there on finishing our first month (give or take) of law school!
This post is going to be about outlining.
There’s a reason people suggest outlining early. I outlined for Civ Pro and Contracts over the past week and it was HELL ON EARTH. One million times worse than reading. I really wish I had taken more sensible notes. And I really wish all of my notes fit together, in some meaningful and understandable way. But I found that my professors love to squib about things that don’t tie into anything, yet somehow still feel important. So where the hell do these random items go? Should I create a section called “things the professors tangentially talked about for 20 minutes so it must be important, but doesn’t really have anything to do with the actual topic at hand”? Or should I risk leaving it out? Bottom line: Outlining sucks and I don’t know how anyone could possibly wait until the end of the semester to do it because, it’s really time consuming. 4 weeks of 2-3 classes a day week equals only 8-12 classes, and each outline took me an entire day. Not to freak anyone who hasn’t started outlining out, but do yourself a favor and get on it, pronto.
Torts this weekend. Mmmm fun times.
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Seriously! I’ve only just finished the backlog of civpro outlining I had. After we got feedback from our torts hypo, I realized I outlined wrong so I’m re-doing that sucker this weekend. As for contracts, I’m still not entirely sure how to outline that one so I’ll tinker here and there.
It is nasty. But I think it’s better to have nasty now rather than an utter nightmare at the end of the semester. I don’t really think anybody waits until Thanksgiving to start outlining, that seems…like you’re pushing it.
idwsj - September 24, 2009 at 1:19 pm
We haven’t really gotten any feedback on anything thus far in the semester. Any suggestions on how not to outline for torts, since I’m planning on taking care of that this Sunday?
Valentina - September 24, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I thought the torts exam would be about justifying one theory (Torts dislikes the modern law take) so I spent a lot of time citing merely holdings (not much facts) and reasons why we’d want to adopt the other theory.
But I think for our exam, it’s more a matter of making sure facts of cases you cite for control are on point and use the holding of the case to guide your answer. So I just need to re-look at all my cases to outline with cases + holding and deemphasize the alternate theory.
idwsj - September 25, 2009 at 1:04 am
oy… outlining. I’m doing that all weekend. It’ll be a blast. (sense the sarcasm?)
cowgirl - September 24, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Have fun…hah!
Valentina - September 25, 2009 at 3:03 am
I started outlining a week or so ago. Talk about scary. More power to you for starting early!
Izzie - October 30, 2009 at 9:33 pm