Sometimes graduate students are so busy doing all the work that is necessary for getting diplomas that they can forget to enjoy their studies. A book newly acquired by the Thammasat University Library offers some advice to help resolve this issue. It is shelved in the General Books collection of the Sanya Dharmasakti Library, Tha Prachan campus. Its title, How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School gives an impression of having time for sanook during studies. The book examines psychological and sociological aspects of studying law, but can also be applied to graduate studies in other faculties.
The author, Assistant Professor Kathryne M. Young, teaches sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. She teaches courses on social psychology, criminal procedure, and sociology of law. She uses ethnography and interviews to examine the hidden social mechanisms that produce inequality within the criminal justice system. To research How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School, she obtained data from over 1000 American law students from over 100 different law schools, as well as hundreds of alumni, dropouts, and law professors. She is a graduate of Stanford Law School, but chose not to practice law.
The TU Library owns another book with guidance about how to avoid being disappointed by law school and the legal profession: The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law. By examining psychological aspects and job satisfaction, these books offer more than just hints about how to pass exams.
Assistant Professor Young suggests that students consider mindfulness meditation. The TU Library owns a number of books and CDs about mindfulness. Meditation can help resolve stress and anxiety related to law studies and practice. She recommends Zen as an appropriate attitude to adopt when dealing with higher studies. Hints about focus and attention, yoga, and making stress into something good are all parts of her approach. It is possible to increase willpower by using meditation applications (apps). These only take a few minutes each day, but the relaxing sounds they contain can help students to avoid worrying too much about academic results.
There are also productivity apps, helping students to organize their day into blocks of time, filled with tasks that need to be done. Diving up time in this way can allow us to pay close attention for 25 minutes at a time, which is the ideal amount of time for concentrating, and then take a break for five minutes to refresh our minds before working some more. For every three blocks of time we study, the app will remind us to take a 15-minute break.
Writing English
A special challenge for students in the TU Faculty of Law is writing in English. A guide such as The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style, which is owned by the TU Library, gives some ideas about how to avoid artificial language and mistakes in grammar. The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style is shelved in the General Stacks of the Puey Ungphakorn Library, Rangsit Campus.
Advice is also available for how to read legal documents in English to get the most out of texts. These are skills that should be useful even after students graduate with their degrees. In their professional lives as well, some related pressures and challenges may require some of the same approaches. In 2015, an academic study, What Makes Lawyers Happy?: A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success was published in the George Washington Law Review. The authors concluded, among other findings:
Psychological factors related to self, others, meaningful and personally engaging work, and supportive work supervision were far more predictive of well-being than external “success” factors relating to competitive standing, honors, status, or financial rewards. Striking examples included highly competitive and prized achievements such as law review membership and making partner in a law firm, neither of which bore any relationship to the well-being of subjects. Secondary analyses also showed that public service lawyers were happier and more satisfied than other lawyers, including those in the most prestigious, highly paid positions. Further, across the sample, a number of personal routine and lifestyle choices matched or exceeded the power of income, honors, and credentials as predictors of lawyer well-being. Informing law students, lawyers, and their teachers and employers about these findings could serve a number of important goals, including improved well-being, performance, and ethical behavior across the profession.
This suggests that just as some students may not enjoy law school, even if they received good grades, some lawyers may not have fun with their profession, even if they are well paid and have a high level position. Assistant Professor Young notes:
I believe law and lawyers can do great things. However, a lot of people go to law school with an inaccurate sense of what those three years will be like. All kinds of forces shape them in ways they did not expect, and not always in ways of which they are proud. Many lawyers-in-training lose something of themselves along the way, but I do not think this loss is inevitable. Some of law school’s problems are systemic and need to be addressed by law schools themselves: by law professors, curriculum committees, bar associations, and the like. Those problems are not the focus of this book. Instead, I am interested in what law students can do at this moment to make their experiences better.
One way to feel better about law studies is to face the fact that students may feel concerned about financial matters, uncertainty about finding work after graduation, too much work, and other reasons. Some students may feel that they are not brilliant enough to deal with the heavy academic expectations of graduate school. By asking ourselves why we are in a graduate school, whether the TU Faculty of Law or any other department, we can get closer to understanding that we are learning technical approaches that will be useful professionally.
Assistant Professor Young’s data suggests that one in three American law school graduates considered dropping out at some point. Depending on what the students really want to do in life, dropping out or remaining in law school can both be good choices. Making the choice that is best suited for us means remembering that we are all individuals with different talents and priorities. What we plan to do later in life may suggest how we should select courses, to gain the expertise we may need in future years.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)