Well, I never was a very good pen pal…

I find it slightly amusing that I started this blog as a challenge to contribute regularly and document my law school journey.  I come back to it now exactly one month later.  No time like the present for an update.

I can say that part of my excuse was a great vacation. Time on the beach, TIFF and all things not involving work were wonderful.  Now, the three weeks prior to my vacation I can’t really account for.  However, I have made progress on the application front.  Prior to going on vacation I started my application process by putting together an application CV.  It contains all of my education, awards, employment positions and volunteer contributions since graduating high school.  It took almost two days to put together and has saved countless amounts of time since.  I even plan to include the orderly version of this master list with any application I can, just so I don’t miss anything.  If only that worked with OLSAS.  Once that application is complete, I think I will have to post a rant about how much that system irritates me

Second thing I crossed off of my list was the first of my personal statements.  I am currently focusing on three schools: University of Toronto, Osgoode Hall and University of Calgary.  Of the three, UofC seems to place the most emphasis on their statement, so that has been one of my early priorities.  Once I am satisfied with that statement, I can rework pieces of it to fit the requirements of UofT and Osgoode as needed.  The biggest hurdle with this piece is the editing process.  It is sometimes hard to find someone with a few hours they can spare to humble you completely.  An honestly critical opinion is sometimes very hard to find, but worth it based on the improvements it yields.  If the horror stories on the discussion boards are true, then it will need to be a winning piece of prose to do the job.

Since returning from vacation, my focus has been securing my references.  I always find this a little difficult.  I hate asking someone to produce an honest, yet glowing discussion of my qualities (which I don’t always have complete confidence in) on a deadline.  I am working with about a one month window for my gracious letter-writers to work with.  I don’t want to have to apply pressure on my former professors during the start of midterms because I didn’t ask early enough.  I have found two out of my required three and hope to connect with the final one sometime next week.

Hopefully by the weekend I may have something more interesting to comment on.  I should by that time have decompressed from work sufficiently to get a little personality back.

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