Sorry for the lack of post. I try to shoot for a minimum of one per week. The thing is, I HAD NO IDEA, ya'll. Not a clue. Nope, totally thought this whole outlining thing would be SO easy. I was even excited! What IS wrong with me??
Never in my life have I sat at my desk staring at a blinking cursor completely unable to write anything. Never! I'm usually overwhelmed with all of the ideas tumbling out of me onto the keyboard. It gets messy, normally.
Here are my problems.
First, at my Methods professor's recommendations, I surrounded myself with my books, syllabus, supplements, and a few commercial outlines for a particular subject. Then, after making a blood sacrifice to a dark god, all those items would magically combine into the glorious if not somewhat ethereal OutLine. Yeah, not so much. What format do I take? I was thinking use the syllabus and then alter it with material from the commercial outlines. Then plug in holdings/issues to the cases on the syllabus. Then make some sort of a synthesized rule. But the commercial outlines don't even acknowledge cases really, they just give you the overall rule, which is SUPER helpful, except I have a feeling my profs are going to refer to cases or want us to (they've said as much) and there is just no way I can put BOTH in there. If I do, the thing will be 200 pages long instead of the 40 or so I was aiming for.
HELP ME. THE POST-ITS ARE STARTING TO REBEL. I DON'T LIKE THE WAY THAT OLD EMANUEL DUDE IS LOOKING AT ME. I'VE BITTEN OFF ALL MY NAILS. OH LOOK, I DROPPED A CHEET-OH. I WONDER HOW LONG IT'S BEEN THERE. NOM NOM NOM. WHAT?!?!
Okay so it isn't THAT bad. But still, not being able to write is a discomfort I am not used to. Not to mention I still have The Memo That Shall Not Be Named to write before Fall Break is over. And the voices are getting louder.
I think my shortest outline 1L was like 87 pages. And that was after I shrunk down the margins and lots of the text into smaller fonts. BUT they were the most helpful things I ever did in law school. Also, I didn't work on them at all until Thanksgiving break. It's much easier to digest/synthesize after a longer period of time, for me. At this time I was probably still adjusting to reading cases, but in a month I was figuring crap out.
ReplyDeleteYou can do this.
I find your post hilarious because I know exactly what you mean. Outlining is the worst. I started mine in criminal law for our midterm and basically put everything I could into it (cases, notes, commercial stuff, EVERYTHING). I really have no idea how to cut it down. Guess I'll have to work on that...
ReplyDelete