The Spring Break Agenda: Tackling Outlining

I said that this semester I was going to turn over a new leaf and stay ahead of the game. Well these last few weeks before spring break that kind of slipped away a bit but thankfully we are on break and I can FINALLLYYYYY draw in a deep breath. Although its not all sleep netflix sleep netflix. My property professor gave us the advice to take 4-5 days off completely from law school over our 10 day break and I'm not taking his advice lightly.

Why?

Up until last week I could feel a major burn out approaching and that is the last thing I, or anyone, wants to happen. We still have another month before finals and summer so having this week off couldn't have come at a better time. The first weekend of break I went out of town for a weekend to see some friends from undergrad and let me tell you it was needed on so many levels. I let loose had some fun and didn't think about law school for two days - just like the professor order. On Monday I spent my day doing law school related things:

Cover Letter for Summer Intern Applications
Criminal Law Outline
Created Remaining Spring Break Schedule

Unfortunately though today we were hit with a big snow storm that is supposed to continue until tomorrow night. I wasn't able to make it into school and while I had planned to do outlining today I had to run some local errands with my mom before the snow hit. By the time we got back I got to do some child labor by shoveling - which turned into my 23 year old self playing in the snow with the pup. Long rant cut short, I had another fun day that ended with a Netflix movie binge. Whoops. But I decided I couldn't be completely unproductive so here I am.... blogging :)

But that also meant some adjusting to my spring break study schedule so I figured now would be a great time to share it in case anyone else needs a reference on how to approach it and stay productive.

Keep in mind that for me whats in each box is more so a guideline to what I should be focusing on. I do want to do Hypos but I want to make sure my outlines are up to date and I have some time to review them before I dive in to practice problems so depending on how the rest of my week goes my plan is to tackle some hypos on Sunday along with some more readings.

Now lets get to the "fun stuff:

OUTLINING

Out of the 4 years of my undergrad career I never once had to outline. I was an English major, Political Science minor so a majority of my final exams were papers and those that weren't were not cumulative. Coming into law school I had no idea what in the heck I was doing when it came to outlining hence why I waited until the last minute to do it because I didn't think it would take all that long... I was very naive the first semester. Because of this I decided at the beginning of the spring semester that I was going to keep up with outlining... So far I have failed at that... Honestly time just flies by and it seems that this semester, with the extra course, I always have something due on Monday or Friday to where I don't get as much done as I plan on... another reason why spring break couldn't have come at a better time.

(1) Monday I spent most of my day working on my Crim Outline and here is how I did thatI went through the class Syllabus and put all of the headings in a word document - My professor was nice enough to have topic Headings, subheadings and the cases already laid out so in a document it was the barebones outline for the semester. All I had to do was plug in the information.

(2) Following the barebones, I began by going through all of my class notes and the condensed power points my professor posted and plugged the important pieces of information into the outline.

(3) Once I went through all of my class notes, I went through my reading notes (and book notes) and either added to what my class notes missed out on or plugged in information that we didn't get to in class

(4) My final way of checking/ condensing what I have is by looking at the supplemental outlines I have. DO NOT RELY ON THESE FOR YOUR SOLE OUTLINE. These are merely used as a supplement to your class notes and book notes. I found this to be extremely helpful to condense cases down to only the important facts and as a way to check to be sure I was getting the rule correct. There also a great way to clarify any concepts that are not completely clear.

(5) Other tips - I am big on making sure that I can go through a document and follow what in the world is going on within it so formatting to me is a major pet peeve. One thing that I did at the beginning is obviously use headings and subheadings with roman numerals for each new topic and then letters and numbers for the sub topics within it. But I also use a color coding and font style system - red and italics is for Cases, blue and italics is for the MPC/ Common Law/ State Law. I find that by doing this its easier for me to know learn the material within each section and have them stand out instead of it all just blurring together.