There is under a month until final exams roll around, and I'm busy attempting (or at least thinking about attempting) to get into review mode. When you are a 1L, the horrors of the first year of law school are tempered in part by reading week - you get a week of no classes to prepare for finals. It might not sound like much, but boy is it wonderful! My first semester, reading week took the form of a friend and I (hi Julia!) heading to my aunt and uncle's house in Cape Ann for seclusion and 24-7 focus on our books. Second semester, I holed up in Boston, which was less quiet but meant I had access to study groups.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as reading week during your second and third years of law school. This means that you are both learning new material AND reviewing at the same time. Every semester I hope that the teachers will take pity on us, and leave that last week for reviewing in class, but with the short quarters here at NUSL, we need every class we can get in order to cover the material in the syllabus. So that’s where I am now - trying to prepare for the end, while in the midst of still figuring everything out! And there is a lot to figure out - in Fed Courts we are up to our necks in the 11th Amendment, in Employment Law we are drowning in Unemployment Insurance, in Law and Economic Development we are broaching that teeny-tiny and completely accessible subject of Transnational Corporations (TNC's to those in the know), and in my Independent Study we are looking to start making some modest recommendations about national tobacco control. Can you sense my sarcasm and slight panic? Yep, it all feels a little overwhelming right now…but such is finals season! And on the other side? Co-op, the holy grail of NUSL.