Done With My Final Semester Exams! I'm Keeping All These Revision Notes In A Shoebox So I Can Look Back

Done with my final semester exams! I'm keeping all these revision notes in a shoebox so I can look back and reminisce 😌

Hello, hope you're doing well!!

It's only been two months into law school for me and way too early to assess what I want to pursue going forward, but I'm curious- what made you decide to pursue an LLM? More importantly, what factors did you have to consider before making that decision?

Hi!

What made you decide to do an LLM? - Although I have almost no experience writing research papers, I am deeply interested in the process of knowledge creation that is employed when writing them. I have profound respect for the authors of all the texts we have been prescribed in our course. A part of me wants to go deeper into that space of creation. LLM is a way to involve deeper into legal research and methodology. I love academia.

What factors I considered when making the decision to pursue LLM -

I have the time, and the resources. I can afford to spend another year on further education. I have no dependants and no pressing need to be financially independent as of yet.

I want to go to a better University where my chances of meeting future mentors and people like myself are greater. My current University is hostile towards learning.

Getting into a good university for masters also would help in making quality connections in the field, and I get to explore the possibilities in a way I can't right now with a bachelor's degree from an average university.

Note: It is never a good idea to be influenced by institutional repute. You and only you have control over your future. Just being in a good university does not guarantee life long success. That being said, institutes of repute can be a good way to surround yourself with ambitious and like minded people. That gets you very far in life.

I wish you the best of luck!

(⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)⁠✧⁠*⁠。

Started using Forest

if possible, i'd love to ask a quick follow-up again on your response to my q on apps you use as a law student :) you mentioned xodo & pdfexpert as two apps you use for pdfs. as a fellow law student, i've struggled with finding an appropriate way of reading/organising/annotating long pdfs.. if possible i'd love to ask two quick qs!

could i ask how you use each app? i'm not very organised so i'm thinking of committing to one but not sure which

could you give a step-by-step rundown of your approach to studying a new topic/section of the law? (e.g., do you read before a lecture/annotate handout/notetaking in seminars) my course introduces a new legal area each week per module so was wanting some professional advice on how to manage :') tysm!! <3

Hi again! This is how I use XODO/PDF expert:

(take my advice with a grain of salt I don't really have a stellar academic track record and the only thing I'm good at is spending all my hours studying and coming up with ideas that need a lot of years to perfect. I'm hoping the hard work will pay off in later years but everything's more of a WIP at the moment. I don't have an estimate of my own credibility)

Whenever I have a long 500 page judgement to get through, I break up the long judgement by adding an index in the app. The apps lets me add my own index. If it is a textbook, I already have an index so navigating in between the pages is easier, and it also helps me get a bird's eye view of the subject/topic

After indexing it, I assign a specific color to a specific sub-topic. One judgement, for example, deals with several issues, like Secularism, Federalism, etc. I assign a color to them, and as I'm reading the judgement, I highlight specific lines with their specific colors that basically sum up the argument being made. So I know which paragraphs talk about which sub-topic.

When I've highlighted the main arguments, and then I glance through the document, a little mind map begins to form in my mind. I learn to separate small nuggets of ideas and learn how they're linked to each other.

I also sum up the paragraphs or put in key phrases on the margins when I feel that they have switched to talking about a distinctly separate idea.

Now I switch to other note taking apps for the next step. Usually, I use Obsidian to make my notes.

After understanding the basic framework of whatever text I am reading, I make my own mind map or framework with my own words. This step is very important, because it is very easy to lose yourself in the topic and not know how to make a head or tail out of it. Especially legal text.

Finally, I have personally found that it is important to set up a strict timeline to when you want to be done with a specific topic and move on. The temptation to go deeper into any topic is very real and negatively affects your ability to get a grip with the subject as a whole. Do not give in to it. Whenever you sit down to study a topic, restrict yourself to one document/text/judgement/whatever class notes you're handed. Do not try to look up something, and get trapped in the hyperlink loop.

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TLDR;

1. I use pdf readers to highlight topics by different colors so I can break up the text into topics and learn how the different ideas are linked.

2. I then make my own framework from the text with my own words and put that in my notes

Finally went outside.