Posts Tagged ‘exhausted’

In undergrad we had a glorious six weeks of uninterrupted vacation between fall and spring semesters. We called it “wintersession.” What made it so magnificent was that it was enough time to completely forget about school and all the obligations inherent, yet not so much time that it required you to get your ass out the door and get a job. There was one regrettable wintersession sophomore year where I stayed on campus and endured record-breaking cold in Massachusetts (seriously, my weatherbug said -14 one morning). I had decided to take an intensive Spanish class during that six weeks and my menopausal profesora insisted on keeping the windows open during the class which met five days a week from 8:30AM to 1:30PM. But my other three wintersessions were spent languishing in front of my parents’ television and hanging out with old high school friends who happened to be in the area.

Law school break is a different beast. All told it was about two and a half weeks, much of which was spent feverishly hunting down summer job opportunities. The slew of cover letters seemed endless as did the trips to school in the frigid weather to use the printers. Still, I did use the lack of classes and deadlines as an opportunity to catch up on some long-missed sleep. Some days I festered in bed until 4PM rising only at long last because my stomach demanded it.

But despite this Guinness record-rivaling exercise in human laziness, I’ve begun spring semester more tired than I’ve ever been in all of law school (all five months of it). Last semester it surprised me how awake I felt all the time because I’ve always been one to be in bed by 10PM when I had work the next day. Despite never getting to bed before midnight (which itself is considerably earlier than many of my classmates), I always felt alert and ready during fall semester. Even during finals when I subsisted primarily on Coke Zero and Twizzlers I still felt like I could concentrate on studying without getting too distracted by tiredness and agitation.

But now? I feel so exhausted all the time. I no longer approach my reading with enthusiasm but with the dread of facing the orthodontist on braces-tightening day. I can’t tell if my new core subjects (property, constitutional law, criminal law) are just fantastically boring compared to the old ones (ha!) or if I’m just sick of it all. I’m still glad I’m here and I still like law school generally so I’m not really sure what’s going on.

We have an extra class – an elective – piled onto the core courseload which may have something to do with it. My Wednesdays are horrible with class from 8AM practically all the way through to 4:10PM. Tuesdays are made horrible by preparation for Wednesdays.

What’s especially surprising (and disconcerting) about this change in my overall body chemistry is that I’ve been doing cardio every day – and the whole point was to increase my energy levels!

I just don’t know.