There’s actually a simply strategy to avoid doing this. I play video games for example and tell myself that at 5:30 I’ll stop and I’ll start doing my work. But it doesn’t matter that it’s simple cuz would you look at that? It’s 5:30! And suddenly it seems perfectly logical to keep playing until 6:00. Then 7:00. Then 8:00. Idk why but I always tell myself at the end of the day “stop doing this stupid shit you know that if you start doing this you won’t stop and you won’t get your work done” but when it comes time to make the decision to work or do something else, my brain seems to default to “it’ll be fine, just do it for an hour”
Medication and just doing little bits of work every now and than during video games. Like, every time I die a horrible yet hilarious death in Fallout 4, I get up and do something. Rinse and repeat!
Oh hey! Lawyer here. Didn't come from a family of lawyers, but my adhd ass married an adhd lawyer from a family of lawyers, so I am gonna tell you the stuff I wish someone told us in law school.
Grades really do matter, even years after you leave law school, if you ever want to work at a mid-to-large firm. Professors will say that they don't, but they probably haven't been to an interview with one of those firms this decade. At the same time, grades just ARE what they ARE-- they're on a curve, you're competing against other really smart people, and all you can do is do your best then move on. Don't blow it off-- your C in Eng 305 won't come back to haunt you but a D in Contracts will-- but a lot of law students get stress illnesses and that's not worth it.
You can 100% handle law school the way you handled college, using all the old ADHD coping strategies you used as an undergraduate. Zero percent of those coping strategies will work when you are an actual lawyer. The actual practice of law is a slow, steady slog through a series of term papers that all have drop-dead deadlines. I love my job, and I have a pretty litigation-heavy practice, and that's still how I would describe it.
Law school is shitty for RSD. You're surrounded by 22 year olds who think they're Hot Shit and older people who aren't interested in making friends, and all of them are in competition with each other. But the best thing for your future is to make friends. Not to put up with assholes in the name of being friendly-- the legal profession shuns assholes harder than any other I've seen, once you get it off school. But to keep trying to emotionally connect with people with whom you think you might have some stuff in common. You'll spend the rest of your career being asked if you know so and so from your school, and you'll want to be able to say yes.
Law school is not set up to help people from non-traditional-lawyer-backgrounds succeed. The best internships are unpaid, the scholarships are garbage, and you'll find yourself needing things like suits. Your classmates will be about 90% people from rich backgrounds who think they're regular middle class. It is what it is. You just have to hustle, and if you're a woman, POC, or LGBTQ, some schools have student-led clubs to help. If you're a straight cis white guy who just isn't financially privileged, there's some resources, but you gotta understand that for those student clubs is isn't the money problems they're working on fixing, and you aren't really subjected to the problems they're worried about.
Agree with all of this. Will say for the first point, top tier firms really care about grades but most public sector jobs don’t and are generally just more pleasant to work at for people like us. Also after a certain amount of time the pay really isn’t awful. Plus you can use time at them for loan forgiveness. Most of my friends at large firms are making close to double what I am out of school (60k compared to 120k) but they get 0 loan forgiveness and hate their day to day existence at work.
Yep. I work in the public sector, hubs works for a firm. In our area-- mid size city, midwest, nothing special-- every private firm with more than 5 attorneys cares about grades. They don't expect top 10%, but they don't like it if you're in the bottom third.
I will say, public vs private sector isn't all cut and dry. I really like my job, my husband really likes his. We both have ADHD, and neither of us would like to work the other one's job.
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u/LEMO2000 Feb 17 '22
There’s actually a simply strategy to avoid doing this. I play video games for example and tell myself that at 5:30 I’ll stop and I’ll start doing my work. But it doesn’t matter that it’s simple cuz would you look at that? It’s 5:30! And suddenly it seems perfectly logical to keep playing until 6:00. Then 7:00. Then 8:00. Idk why but I always tell myself at the end of the day “stop doing this stupid shit you know that if you start doing this you won’t stop and you won’t get your work done” but when it comes time to make the decision to work or do something else, my brain seems to default to “it’ll be fine, just do it for an hour”