Ongoing revision

I am currently in London staying with D and his family.  It is true that staying here is much nicer than my dorm room in Cambridge: the space is larger and brighter, I get fed (this is very important), and the office and the bedroom are separate (as studying and sleeping in the same room becomes too much sometimes).

I still feel like I am in a planning phase of revisions.  I started to revise tort, land, contract and constitutional: i.e. every paper except for international.  Somehow, I think I will be ok with most topics except for tort.  It is bizarre how most of my college mates find tort easiest yet it seems most difficult to me.

Anyways, there is much to plan / review / and study.  I am not sure how they figured out which topics to go on each syllabus for each paper.  It just seems that the amount of information the faculty envisioned for students to put in the brain after 8 wks of lectures is disproportionate.

However, I will not surrender.  I will conquer.  I will enjoy the study - well at least I will try.

K

80 hour school week

Well not just any thursdays.. even week thursdays are hard.

Originally, in this term, because of rescheduling of my Tort supervision - from Tuesdays, my group ended up with three supervisions in one day.  Which is unheard of... not recommended at all.

Preparing for supervisions is quite a lot of work.  Recommended amount of work for each supervision is about 15 hrs.  so 5 papers (i.e. subjects) then that's 75 hrs per every two weeks.

Which is not much... I know...  yeah I used to work 50-70 hrs a week but I got paid... got paid pretty decent money.

I will take this opportunity to illustrate the amount of work that I would (ideally) allocate for school. Let's say each cycle is 2 wks and each term has 4 cycles.

So 5 papers
Lectures - 3 lectures a wk per paper (in Michaelmas Term) and 2 lectures a wk per paper (in Lent Term)... in Easter terms, only make-up lectures or revisions lectures are held... yup surprisingly small number of classes we have.

So let's just say 3 hr/wk/paper

So that's 15 hrs / wk --> 30 hrs / 2 wks
Downloading / flinging notes / printing stuff --> let's be generous and assign 5 hrs / 2 wks.
Supervision preps 75 hr / 2 wks
Supervision hours - they run from 1 hr to 2 hrs so average of 1.5/supervision per 2 wks --> 7.5 hrs/ 2 wks
Essay writing - each paper assigns 2 essays per term.  10 essays per term.  let's say it takes 5 hrs to write one - unfortunately it takes me longer than that... so that's 50 hrs / 8 wks so let's say 12.5 hrs / 2 wks.

Summing up (for 2 wks)

Lectures - 30 hrs
Prep classes - 5 hrs
Supervision prep - 75 hrs
Supervisions - 7.5 hrs
Essay writing 12.5 hrs
-----------------------------
Total of 130 hrs / 2 wks
so that's 65 hrs a week.

but that's sort of average...
if you are verbally challenged - like me - who wishes the law books were written in numbers - like me...
then you need to add some contingency...

so let's say... 80 hrs a wk for me.. but even 65 hrs for normal average law student.. not a light work load.
crazy right?  yeah I did not even study this much even during exam time.

the scary thing is that you need to have your brain fully engaged at all hours...
yup.. that's what it takes as a law student... i am not sure about other places, at least that's what it is to be a law student here...

anyways, Thursdays are long days... hence my lunch [shown in the photo]...

one more supervision (contract) to go.. and then another one (land) tomorrow and wk 6 will be officially done.

K

Lent term and tripos

i know it is a bit embarrassing to write about the lent term when it is already more half over. but... here it goes.

so life as an affiliated student reading law is not easy.
law degree in general is considered to be the most difficult degree in the UK. (it is considered to be the most difficult to get the first class hounors. there is some article i read before).

but that's just for students taking it over 3 years.  affiliated students like me (also called senior status students) are finishing it in two years.  it probably makes it at least 50% harder.

currently, i am reading 5 papers (i.e. 5 subjects).
only two of them are the first year courses and the rest are from the second years.
and four out of three are core papers - which mean their syllabi cover a lot of material. 

although at the end of the degree, we - the graduates of 2 year law program - will not have completed as many papers (or subjects or courses whichever concept you feel comfortable) but we would have completed all the core ones and some electives.  yes.. it is intense. 

anyways, so in michaelmas term as the first term, it is definitely front loaded with lectures.  all core papers have three lectures a week.  this term, unless a lecturer is behind or needs to make up for a missed one, we usually have two lectures for all five papers.  so that means 10 hours of lectures a week.  that seems light, eh?  NO.  definitely not light.  because they are still covering so much material in each class and there is a pressure of tripos (i.e. year end exams...).  and they are scary. 

argh... yesterday, my classmate told me 'we need to study because we only have 18 weeks left till tripos..' yes for any other courses or program, i would have just laughed at him but here... it is different... i am starting to feel the pressure. 

K

Land and International, Cambridge Tripos

I have explained previously that I am taking a two year law program; thus I have to take some papers (courses) that are for second year students.

So currently I am taking - Constitutional, Tort (these two are for 1st yrs - to be more accurate for Part IA) and Contract, Land and International (these three are for 2nd yr student - for Part IB).

There are seven papers that one has to take to be qualified in the UK and that include Constitutional, Tort, Contract, Land, (I am taking these four this year as a Part IB student - I skipped Part IA as I entered Cambridge as an affiliated student) and EU, Criminal and Equity (these three I will be taking next year as a Part II student).

Trust me.  The Cambridge tripos system is so very complicated.  I still don't quite understand.  Maybe I kind of understand now but I am probably not using the terms correctly.

International was an optional paper that I was "strongly" recommended to take.  I would have taken IP if I could but it was "strongly" recommended for me not to take.  Argh.  I was a bit disappointed as I only get to choose three optional papers until I graduate but... it seems that International Law is very interesting and it definitely helps me to understand better what's going on around the world.

K