A fleeting visit.

I went up to Oxford for a couple of days last weekend and I must admit it was a slightly strange experience.

The thing is, Oxford doesn't change.* And although many of my friends have left, there are still a couple who stuck around. But I'm coming to realise how much I've moved on since I've graduated: student life is long gone and Oxford bubble have finally burst, letting some air in.

It was nonetheless really nice to be back. At least because I got a chance to get some shopping done and eat an amazing pie in the Covered Market. And to tell my friends how happy I am now. Without sitting in the library all day. With young people around me all the time.

And I've realised that I don't actually miss Oxford. I do miss people a lot, but not the place itself. I'm really content with my life as it is now. I might not have a Lebanese deli round a corner or a plethora of little patisseries, but I have the sea five minutes away from the house.

That is enough to keep me content for the next couple of years.

* This is not entirely true, since St Anne's College finally has a modern library and it looks surprisingly good. At least the scaffolding is gone which is great.

I did it!

Today at 13:03 I've received a long awaited email with my examination results.

I'm super proud of myself, especially that I struggled so much during the revision period. But I did it! By hard work and thanks to an overflow of support from Mr Magic and all my friends. I wouldn't have done it without them. They've encouraged me, believed in me all the way through, even when I saw no hope for tomorrow, when I sobbed miserably in the library and refused to get out of bed. They were there for me all this time, even when I was super annoying and didn't want them around. I'm so blessed having such wonderful people around me.

A lesson from this? Never give up. It might sound like a cliche, but it's true. You might need people to carry you through (or push you through) certain parts of the journey, as it happened with me, but you can do more than you think. I'm probably nowhere near my limits yet. It is scary to explore them, yes. It might seem like you can never progress. But you can! With a little faith.

Another lesson from my exam struggle is that you need to be brave enough to ask for help. Ask around, ask as many people as you think is necessary until you get the support you need. Sadly people cannot read your mind and from personal experience I can say that hiding the emotional turmoil going on inside of you is relatively easy, so you need to reach out to people who care about you. Otherwise you will be left all alone. And it's really not the happiest place to be.

And so the university chapter of my life is nearly complete. Only graduation left now, that's at the end of the month, and it will be it. Can't believe how quickly the time flown by. It's absolutely incredible. But I'm ready to move on to another challenge.

I think I deserve a star sticker now.

Things I'm looking forward to.

Having finished my exams on Friday, I can finally think about pleasant things I'm looking forward to. And there is plenty of those, since I have exciting times ahead.

Mr Magic's visit

After weeks of waiting, he is finally coming, so we can celebrate my finishing of exams and spend some time together. This will be my rest time. Time of joyous bouncing around, long night talks and other shenanigans. It's a highlight of my post-finals period and I'm so excited for it.

Moving to the Isle of Wight

I've dreamt about living on the Isle of Wight and I'm so happy that I got allocated to the school there. It will be fantastic to live in such a beautiful part of the world, with miles of beaches, charming coastal walks, the Benedictines of St Cecilia, the Dinosaur Island, Isle of Wight Zoo and the sea all around. And I'm really looking forward to finding my own place, moving the furniture, arranging my posters and pictures, finding out my nearest shop and so on. It's completely new life waiting ahead now.

Summer Institute

This is a vital part of Teach First training and will probably be super-intense. I'm a little apprehensive at the moment. My Maths is not up to scratch quite yet, but I have almost three months to work on it. I'm really looking forward to meeting like-minded people who also believe that every child should receive excellent education. I'll be visiting my school for a week and it will be a great opportunity to get used to  it, settle a bit and work out how that place is run.

Now I'm off to my law picnic followed by drinks and Finalists' Dinner. It's time to celebrate!

Finals in tweets and pictures.

One down, eight to go #finals

— Katarzyna Zielinska (@katzielinska7) May 30, 2016

Second exam gone fine despite migraine and a ridiculous amount of painkillers I had to consume in the last 24h #finals #iamblessed

— Katarzyna Zielinska (@katzielinska7) May 31, 2016

Another exam done. Was actually fun to write plus I had time for some doodling #finals pic.twitter.com/7xRxpOXSpA

— Katarzyna Zielinska (@katzielinska7) June 1, 2016

Ugh, at least I don't have to do a land exam ever again #finals

— Katarzyna Zielinska (@katzielinska7) June 2, 2016

Finals isn't about knowledge of the law any more. It's now a physical endurance test.

— Riane Trotman (@riane_trotman) June 2, 2016

#finals day 6. The state of my pink carnation symbolises my physical and mental exhaustion. 3 more to go! pic.twitter.com/ngoxzodZTy

— Katarzyna Zielinska (@katzielinska7) June 4, 2016

Juris exam in a nutshell: there's a general duty to obey the law of a reasonably just legal system & law should not enforce all of morality

— Katarzyna Zielinska (@katzielinska7) June 6, 2016

#finals nearly over, two more to go! Woohoo!

— Katarzyna Zielinska (@katzielinska7) June 6, 2016

#finals nearly over, two more to go! Woohoo!

— Katarzyna Zielinska (@katzielinska7) June 6, 2016

Red carnation day finally. In four hours #finals will be over! #hooray pic.twitter.com/8wcMQwTKuh

— Katarzyna Zielinska (@katzielinska7) June 10, 2016

Made it to the end of #finals!!! pic.twitter.com/5YV3gMN3zc

— Katarzyna Zielinska (@katzielinska7) June 10, 2016

Time flies: my fours years at Oxford are nearly over.

It's strange to think that in a couple of weeks I will no longer be a student. Real life will begin, with bills, banking, weekly food shopping, waking up for work and being a responsible adult. It's both exciting and scary at the same time.

On numerous occasions I complained about Oxford. We do not get many contact hours, my degree is judged exclusively on the basis of nine exams crammed into two weeks at the end of my final year, Oxford is hugely male-dominated and mental health issues are not tackled enough.

At the same time, I will be sad to leave. I will miss Oxford so much. 

Oxford has taught me to be independent. Not only in my studies, since I had to find my own way through endless reading lists and stacks of books, but also in life. I've learnt how to deal with people, how to work in a team, how to care for my friends and how to care for myself. It's been a very fruitful four years. I've met so many wonderful people. I really hope that they will remain a  part of my life, even though we will be all over the place.

I'm immensely thankful for these four years. I'm thankful for each opportunity I had to challenge myself. I'm thankful for my fantastic friends. I'm thankful for the most wonderful man in the world.

Veni. Vidi. Amavi.

I'm starting my Teach First Summer Institute at the end of this month. I will be moving to the Isle of Wight in August and this is something I dreamt of for a long time. I didn't mind where exactly I would work, but I really wanted to by the sea and, well, you cannot get much closer to the sea than live on an island, right? I suppose the title of my blog will gain a new meaning, I will truly be on a small island then.

Almost there.

I've done six exams in the past six days and, gosh, I have enough! Thank god there's only three more left now, including a short juris exam and my favourite PIL.

My body is at the brink of exhaustion and I'm so looking forward to being free again (for a week, haha, but better this than nothing at all). Waking up every day at 6am is not fun, but I'm slowly getting used to it, since it will be my routine once I start working at school. A friend of mine commented that these finals are no longer a test of knowledge of the law, but a physical endurance test and this is really true. We are all just tired at this point, so no wonder that examiners' reports for subjects examined at the end always voice a disappointment at the standard of the scripts. Well, no wonder really, since you subject us to so much pressure in such a short space of time. But at least it will be over soon, it's much better than if exams stretched across a good few week as some people's do.

I need to say that I am very proud of myself that I survived last week and that I am in a decent mental state. Given that I thought about suspending my studies, I've made an incredible progress, thanks to all the support that I've received.

And I've learnt two things from this emotional roller-coaster that I've been on in the past couple of months. First, you need to really believe in yourself. Whatever happens, just do your best, push through and keep believing that it will somehow work out in the end. Second, don't be scared to ask for help. Don't be afraid to depend on somebody. Make this leap of faith and open yourself up. Because others are there for you, you just need to talk to them, since sometimes it is not at all obvious that you need help (unless you are sobbing in the library, yep, that happened too). Somewhat I'm even happy that it was so difficult to get through. I have even more reasons to be proud. And a lot to talk about.

I'm almost there. Five more days.

Chill miss.

I've been stressing out so much about these upcoming collections that it wasn't healthy at all.

 

Do they count towards anything?

 

No.

 

Would it help if I had a mental breakdown?

 

No.

 

Given the answers to the above two questions, I resolved not to worry about it too much. I've always had not so great collection results, but at the end of the day, it's finals that matter and I'm determined to get myself sorter by then. I will be. In the meantime I might have a serious talk with my tutors, but oh well. What's important now is that I remain positive and have enough energy to get me through this year.

Especially that there are so many exciting things coming up! Tomorrow tea and cake in the Chaplaincy, dinner with my Polish folks, Captain America visiting, Itchy Feet party (anyone wants to join btw?), G&D's treat soon... It actually looks like it might be an entertaining term.

So I'm chilling with my bowl of bolognese. Om nom nom nom

Too much work. Or too little?

I was repeatedly told that I would have no work during my year abroad. However I was actually kept pretty busy for at least a good chunk of my time in Leiden. And it's only today that I've realised why.

It's not so much that Oxford's workload is so heavy that compared to it my year abroad workload is nothing. At the end of the day across this year I managed to do 11 courses, for all of which I had to read textbooks, cases, articles, write an odd assignment, and pass an exam at the end.

The real issue here is that Oxford workload is crammed into three eight-week long terms and here there are two semesters spanning over eight-nine months. So there's simply more time and the work can be distributed. This year, instead of panicking if I can get through all the assigned reading AND produce some sensible work, I could just plan ahead giving myself enough time for each task, not rushing through it. I simply don't have this comfort at Oxford at all. I need to meet all the deadlines, rush through excessive reading lists and somehow fit in attending lectures and tutorials around all this work. It's no fun quite frankly.

This has probably been the best part of my year abroad. Having time to do work. And other things beside it. I'll miss it in October for sure.

The blessing of open book exams.

I had my first open book exam in the upper sixth. It was a history exam on historical controversies, in particular witch-hunting in early modern Europe. I had a pile of books and my notes with me, but I haven't used these much: there wasn't enough time to skim through the pages and in any case I've read everything a couple of times, so most of it stuck to my memory anyway.

Oxford knows no concept of open book exams, unless you count in a statute book and a case list. This is why I was surprise to see so many open book exams at Leiden. Labour law, children's rights, IT law, EU competition law, 4 freedoms in the EU, aerospace law- for all of these I can bring in pretty much everything I want except electronic devices (not the case, quite appropriately in IT law course when I actually typed up my exam on my very own laptop). At first I wasn't really fond of those exams, thinking that they don't really reflect what people have learnt during the course. But now I've reconsidered my opinion and I think that actually such exams make much more sense as a way of testing law students.

What I've learnt by observing lawyers in their work is that they don't have all the legal knowledge in their heads. Admittedly it comes with practice: when you deal with a specific issue on daily basis the pieces of legislation and cases become somewhat burnt into your brain, but as for things that are untypical, you have infinite resources to consult: textbooks, journals, magazines, publications, guidelines etc. Most of which is accessible online. At the end of the day lawyers are not valued for how many quirky case facts they can remember or whether they can recite all relevant statutory provisions. Lawyers are valued for how their brains work.

I find it much more useful to have an exam where I can bring printed cases and articles, because then I don't need to stress out about remembering relevant details and instead can concentrate on applying what I know to the problem I need to solve. I still need to have at least a vague idea (or sometimes a rather specific idea, since, again, there is no time to look for information if you don't know what you're looking for) where to find what I need. Which provisions of the Treaty apply. Whether there is some case or a regulation. 

And although open book exams can be ridiculously easy, they can also be rather challenging. Everything depends on the type of questions asked. Not on the fact that you have your books with you.

What I've been doing wrong.

And what you probably do wrong sometimes too.

After receiving around 15 rejection from law firms I had to face the question: what the hell are you doing wrong, Kat? And so I did, and I even tried to find some answers to this baffling question. The answer didn't come as a result of a long logical process, but rather as a result of a moment of revelation which happened to me a few days ago.

Starting with a logical route, however, since I'm a logically thinking person liking logical processes with clearly defined steps, I thought that maybe the explanation to this string of failures is in the fact that I've sent an excessive number of applications and maybe didn't make any of them good enough? (well, they clearly weren't good enough given the rejections, but maybe a more specific reason can be found). You know, it happens to everyone, that you don't really answer the question, or you make terrible typos or just waffle a lot about nothing specific. This could be the reason, but I had two months to complete all these applications and I actually made an effort to make them tailored for particular law firms, I've done my research and everything, so I rejected this explanation, especially that I've actually managed to get two interviews (but here my adventure with these places finished).

The moment of revelation came one morning when I realised what the reason of my failures was. It's not that I'm not a lawyer material. I just don't really care about business, but I do care about people a lot. So aiming for strictly commercial firms makes no sense whatsoever! And the recruiters know I have no passion for multimillion transactions. But, on the other hand, I absolutely loved working in immigration law, because there I saw real people with problems I could actually very directly address. Working for charities, churches or other institutions acting for public good would be perfect

I've realised that if, by some unfortunate conjunction of stars, I ended up in a commercial firm, I would be really unhappy. I would probably bloody good at whatever area of law I would specialise in, I would not enjoy it.

So the search continues. In the attempt to make this world a little bit better place, I'm joining Teach First Insight Programme in June. I'm so looking forward to it, it really feels like my kind of thing. The future looks so much clearer now that I know what I've been doing wrong.