Should You Get Involved in Extracurriculars in Your 1L Year?
The short answer? It depends.
In law school, there is a lot of NOISE. It can seriously be deafening. I found dealing with the pressure of doing what everyone else was doing to be more stressful than my first set of exams.
My first piece of advice is to map out what you want your three years to look like. I spent an entire weekend looking at all of the opportunities offered at Windsor and Detroit Mercy (I am in the Dual JD), and decided what I truly wanted to pursue, and when was the best time for ME to pursue it. Ultimately, this calmed me down, and I am now excited to proceed confidently through the remainder of my degree.
Let’s talk about the first year, though. Is it absolutely necessary to get involved in your first year of law school? Absolutely not. In my 1L year, I will be honest; I did nothing extracurricular wise. I worked at a local bar/restaurant 15 hours per week and decided to just focus on my marks. Although I felt like it at the time, I really do not think I was the minority in this. The people who are doing nothing extracurricular wise are just never the people you hear. You only hear the super involved people speaking out about it, and then you start to spiral thinking you are behind (at least I did).
There will always be the people who are President of Club A to Z. I applaud these people, I seriously do. But that just was not and is not me. For starters, I wanted an income; that was what was important to me and still is to this day. Law school and life while in law school is expensive; I needed the money. So in my first year, I worked, focused on my marks and tried to acclimate myself to what my life would be like for the next three years. I do not regret it AT ALL.
If you are reading this and not planning on working while in law school, you can see that I am a living breathing example of someone who relinquished 15 hours of their week to something besides studying and lived to tell the tale. The time is absolutely there if you would like to get involved! But do not feel pressured, even if you do not plan on working, to get involved in your first year. It is not a crime to take the first semester of your 1L year, to figure out what the heck is going on, and proceed from there.
I am now in my 2L year. I now have SOME idea of what the heck I am doing. I am currently involved in extracurriculars AND holding my job for 10 hours a week this year instead of 15. I do not want to use this article to boost myself, but I am involved in quite a few things now on both sides of the border that I am extremely proud of. All was not lost for me in not getting involved in my first year.
Would I encourage you to at SOME POINT become involved? Absolutely. It is a welcome and productive break from readings, helps you build connections with other students and faculty, and in some cases, enables you to gain real-world experience to what life as a lawyer is really like outside of the classroom. This article’s point is to calm those who are already overwhelmed by feeling behind on the resume-boosting. There is plenty of time and opportunity to get involved in law school, especially in the summer-time!
Like I said before, my most significant piece of advice is to create a map of what you want your three years to look like. Start by reaching out to your school’s career services and/or your program director to get a feel of what you hope to get out of this degree and how it will help you achieve your long term goals. From there, you can feel confident about what YOU decide to do with YOUR law degree and drown out the noise.
