OUR REFLECTIONS
CIARAN GRIEG QUTLS PUBLICATIONS OFFICER
I was one of those people who stumbled into my law degree.
rules I was asked to follow, the ideas I was asked to consider, and the logic I was asked to apply. It feels unnatural to continuously put ourselves in situations where we are uncomfortable, but by doing so, you might just discover something wonderful about yourself or the law.
In high school, I developed a gut feeling that studying law would be something I could be good at, and somethingIcouldenjoy.Andthen -ta-da! Lawand Business at QUT was on my QTAC form.
Don’t be hard on yourself. I wish I had started practising this a long time ago. It’s natural to want to beat yourself up about a less than satisfactory grade, but it’s moreimportanttoreectandthinkaboutwhatyou will do next time.
I am not proud of this: my complacency, the way I took the privilege of even studying at university for granted. It makes me think of a quote from Legally Blonde (2001): Do you think she woke up one morning and said, "I think I'll go to law school today"?
Make space and time for the other things you love. I Unsurprisingly,Ididn_tlovemyrstyearstudying love creative law. writing, so I changed my degree so that I could study both creative writing and law. I think it’s I didn’t love it, and I also wasn’t very good at it. I so important that we pursue everything we love doing consistently underestimated the workload, the in some shape or form. I feel so grateful that I get to assessment, and the readings. I moaned about using study two areas that I love and I constantly marvel at AGLC referencing. I cried over the way I stumbled how they overlap. Good luck! through moots. I refused to yield to ISAACS and structured all my assignments the same way I did in highschool.Itwas,inreection,disastrous. Why am I telling you this? This is super depressing, right? I’m telling you this because I hung in there. And I’m so incredibly glad that I did. In my second year, I learnt to appreciate how the law interacts with our everyday lives. I grew to be inspired by the way the law can bend and change to reectourvalues.IthinkIlovethelawbecauseit isn_tperfect,butitismalleableandever-changing. I love the law because law students like you and me can be part of that change. We can build new institutions and dismantle the societal structures that don’t serve us anymore. And we can do it all with words. All of the reasons that I love studying lawtodayarethingsIrealisedaftermyrstyear. If you’re looking for some insight into making the most of your years as a law student, this is my advice: Let yourself be challenged. I was so challenged by my rstyearoflaw.Notonlybythework,butalsobythe
6
