Katie’s Declassified [Law] School Survival Guide

As I prepared to head almost 600 miles from the place I called home for twenty-two years, I received a multitude of tips and tricks for surviving law school, but the best piece of advice I didn’t get until I had actually started school. “Prioritize your mental health.” Law school is a stressful environment, that’s not news or an opinion, it’s a fact. And somehow law students everywhere have been convinced suffering for three years was a steppingstone to success. One day in mid-October, I tried out hot yoga and I never looked back. Roughly three times a week, I made the time to spend an hour prioritizing me. Thirty-page readings of two-hundred-year-old cases would be there when I got done, but for sixty minutes, I prioritized myself and what made me happy. It was important for me to remind myself that I am human, worthy of self-care, and it shouldn’t be a trend to neglect my mental health.

And then the pandemic hit, yoga was closed, and like most people, my mental health took a hit. I tried doing yoga at home, and it wasn’t the same. I had a hard time focusing, and I decided to reexamine what self-care meant to me. A year later, I am still waiting for yoga to safely reopen, and my self-care looks different. Now it looks more like a latte on Thursday morning, takeout on Saturday nights, and taking a walk every afternoon. While I look forward to the day I can be back in a yoga studio, I learned a lot about what self-care should and shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be chore or something that I pencil into my planner, it should boldly implemented into my life.

I think a lot of the time as law students, we often forget how important it is to take care of ourselves. Pulling all-nighters and mentally struggling is often see has “paying your dues,” and I hope that in the near future that changes. It took a lot of practice and a long time for me to admit that there was no grade on this planet worth sacrificing myself for, and that is the number one piece of advice I now give to anyone who is preparing for law school.