u/Exciting_Lab_8743

I’m only on my second week of law school and I already feel behind. ngl, the biggest problem for me right now is recitation. I have so many cases and materials to read before each class, and I’m honestly scared of being called without knowing the case. Because of that, I’ve started waking up around 3–4 AM just to get more studying done before my classes in the evening.

I usually sleep around 10–11 PM, wake up at 3–4 AM, and study until class. I know that’s not a lot of sleep, but right now it feels like I have no choice because I’m trying to survive each day of recitation.

The worst part is that I’m starting to notice that I’m not retaining things anymore, cos I’ll spend hours reading cases, making notes, and trying to memorize doctrines, but when I try to recall them later, it feels like everything has disappeared. Sometimes I can literally remember reading a case but can’t explain what happened in it. And then I start wondering if I’m just not studying enough, so I study even more, sleep even less, and the cycle repeats.

I also have backlogs already na, which makes me anxious because while I’m trying to prepare for tomorrow’s recitation, I’m falling further behind on previous readings.
I know it’s only week 2, so part of me feels ridiculous for already struggling this much. But I genuinely don’t know if this is just the normal adjustment period or if I’m approaching law school completely wrong.

For those who went through this,
- How did you deal with the huge volume of cases during the first few weeks?
- How much sleep were you getting?
- How did you prepare for recit without spending your entire day studying?
- And how did you catch up when you already had a backlog?

I’m not rly looking for the “just study harder” advice because I feel like I’m already doing that; feel ko I’m more interested in hearing how other students learned to study efficiently enough to actually retain things without completely destroying their sleep. Honestly, I just want to know if this is normal and whether it actually gets better huhu.

thanks in advance 🙏

Hello, everyone!

I’m currently a 1L. for context, while I really try to read cases in full, there are times when I don’t fully understand what my classmates are saying during discussions, or the professor says something that makes me think, “Am I missing something?” It sometimes makes me wonder if I have a comprehension problem.

Is this a normal experience for 1Ls? If so, do you have any tips or methods for making sure I’m understanding cases correctly? How do you know you’re focusing on the important parts of a case and not missing the key takeaways because even if I try to focus on the main issue/topic of the class, I tend to still have those confusions when discussing with my blockmates or hear new things come out from the mouth of my prof.

tyia