How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School

Zusatztext "Young does an excellent job preparing the reader to navigate the unique emotional challenges law school presents. The coverage of this topic is unmatched in any other law school advice book." Informationen zum Autor Kathryne M. Young is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she teaches courses on social psychology, criminal procedure, and sociology of law. Young holds a JD from Stanford Law School, a PhD from Stanford University, and an MFA from Oregon State University. She and her wife live in Northampton, MA. Klappentext Each year, over 40,000 new students enter America's law schools. Each new crop experiences startlingly high rates of depression, anxiety, fatigue, and dissatisfaction. Kathryne M. Young was one of those disgruntled law students. After finishing law school (and a PhD), she set out to learn more about the law school experience and how to improve it for future students. Young conducted one of the most ambitious studies of law students ever undertaken, charting the experiences of over 1000 law students from over 100 different law schools, along with hundreds of alumni, dropouts, law professors, and more. How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School is smart, compelling, and highly readable. Combining her own observations and experiences with the results of her study and the latest sociological research on law schools, Young offers a very different take from previous books about law school survival. Instead of assuming her readers should all aspire to law-review-and-big-firm notions of success, Young teaches students how to approach law school on their own terms: how to tune out the drumbeat of oppressive expectations and conventional wisdom to create a new breed of law school experience altogether. Young provides readers with practical tools for finding focus, happiness, and a sense of purpose while facing the seemingly endless onslaught of problems law school presents daily. This book is an indispensable companion for today's law students, prospective law students, and anyone who cares about making law students' lives better. Bursting with warmth, realism, and a touch of firebrand wit, How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School equips law students with much-needed wisdom for thriving during those three crucial years. Zusammenfassung Each year! over 40!000 new students enter America's law schools. Each new crop experiences startlingly high rates of depression! anxiety! fatigue! and dissatisfaction. Kathryne M. Young was one of those disgruntled law students. After finishing law school (and a PhD)! she set out to learn more about the law school experience and how to improve it for future students. Young conducted one of the most ambitious studies of law students ever undertaken! charting the experiences of over 1000 law students from over 100 different law schools! along with hundreds of alumni! dropouts! law professors! and more. How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School is smart! compelling! and highly readable. Combining her own observations and experiences with the results of her study and the latest sociological research on law schools! Young offers a very different take from previous books about law school survival. Instead of assuming her readers should all aspire to law-review-and-big-firm notions of success! Young teaches students how to approach law school on their own terms: how to tune out the drumbeat of oppressive expectations and conventional wisdom to create a new breed of law school experience altogether. Young provides readers with practical tools for finding focus! happiness! and a sense of purpose while facing the seemingly endless onslaught of problems law school presents daily. This book is an indispensable companion for today's law students! prospective law students! and anyone who cares about making law students' lives better. Bursting with...

Autorentext

Kathryne M. Young is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she teaches courses on social psychology, criminal procedure, and sociology of law. Young holds a JD from Stanford Law School, a PhD from Stanford University, and an MFA from Oregon State University. She and her wife live in Northampton, MA.

Klappentext

Each year, over 40,000 new students enter America's law schools. Each new crop experiences startlingly high rates of depression, anxiety, fatigue, and dissatisfaction. Kathryne M. Young was one of those disgruntled law students. After finishing law school (and a PhD), she set out to learn more about the law school experience and how to improve it for future students. Young conducted one of the most ambitious studies of law students ever undertaken, charting the experiences of over 1000 law students from over 100 different law schools, along with hundreds of alumni, dropouts, law professors, and more.

How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School is smart, compelling, and highly readable. Combining her own observations and experiences with the results of her study and the latest sociological research on law schools, Young offers a very different take from previous books about law school survival. Instead of assuming her readers should all aspire to law-review-and-big-firm notions of success, Young teaches students how to approach law school on their own terms: how to tune out the drumbeat of oppressive expectations and conventional wisdom to create a new breed of law school experience altogether.

Young provides readers with practical tools for finding focus, happiness, and a sense of purpose while facing the seemingly endless onslaught of problems law school presents daily. This book is an indispensable companion for today's law students, prospective law students, and anyone who cares about making law students' lives better. Bursting with warmth, realism, and a touch of firebrand wit, How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School equips law students with much-needed wisdom for thriving during those three crucial years.

Inhalt

Contents and AbstractsIntroduction: Why I Wrote This Book chapter abstractWhy would someone who didn't always like being a law student write How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School? In the introduction, Young explains her motivations for writing the book, describing how working toward her JD and PhD concurrently gave her a new perspective on law school and detailing the design and data sources underpinning the book's mixed-methods study. 1You Are Not Alone chapter abstract Law students find themselves dissatisfied for a whole host of reasons, including debt, occupational uncertainty, a high-pressure workload, mental health challenges, difficult peers, or a sense that the student's former self is slipping away. This chapter details the myriad reasons students tend to feel unhappy or out of place in law school, using data from dozens of law students to illustrate the breadth of forms the sense of nonbelonging takes. At the same time, law students are good at pretending that everything is fine, which makes people feel even more individually isolated. But although law school is supposed to be hard, and although some angst doubtlessly comes with the territory, law school need not wreak havoc on students' well-being. 2You Are Good Enough to Be Here chapter abstract The first section of this chapter addresses how impostor syndrome-the persistent sense that you are not really good enough to be where you are-constantly plagues law students. This chapter describes the social and psychological dynamics of impostor syndrome, detailing the thought patterns that characterize it and ten practical strategies for combating it. Using data from current law students, Young explains why law school is often so difficult for people who come in with a track record of academic excellence and how law students can shift their outlook away from thinking in terms of what they "should" do. Lastly, this chapter argues that law s…