I took PCME (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Economics). I was in the science stream, and as much as I enjoyed it, I didn’t want to pursue something physics or chemistry related. So it was very simple: Engineering was out of the question. As much as I enjoyed my science-y subjects, I wasn’t into math, and I didn’t think that doing Physics or Chem would fulfill what I wanted out of a university education.

I actually wanted to do liberal arts in the US; it’s very interdisciplinary and refreshing and you’re not stuck to some kind of syllabus (like in JC) because you get to choose what you want to do! But I didn’t get accepted into most US universities.

I applied for Yale-NUS, but I was placed on a wait-list. So that was kind of gone-ish. I had to decide between taking a gap year, or going to Law School. I felt like going to Law School was the best decision that I could make: it was not too expensive (pursuing a gap year/studying overseas would need a lot of money) and I was also offered a scholarship at SMU, so that was something that pulled me in. I also didn’t think I should take a gap year without really knowing what I wanted, then just apply to the UK for Econs – but I wasn’t even sure I wanted Econs, it was just that I liked Econs a lot in JC. I decided to just go for it, and I never regretted it.

How I got into Law was more of a luck thing – I just applied without actually intending to go for it because I was very set on going overseas. I figured if I wanted to do anything local, it would most likely be Law. I didn’t really think about it that much, and I just applied for it, and went into the interview without placing much importance on it or thinking a lot about it. Maybe that’s why the interview was quite a smooth process for me!

The thing about law is that it’s very versatile. It’s a specialised degree, because chances are if you do Law, you’ll come out a lawyer. But at the same time, it’s very versatile in the sense that you don’t necessarily have to practice Law, and the skills you get from it are useful: they really train you to think, and law permeates a lot of aspects in society; so it’s not as narrow as one might think. It’s not just the law – there’s a lot to it as well!

Yeah I was. For me, it was very straightforward. There were a few factors.

Location

For example, NUS Law is right smack in the middle of Botanic Gardens, and I didn’t want to be at Bukit Timah for the next four years. It wasn’t the most important factor, but it was more important than it should have been.

Prestige

At the end of my interview for both schools, I asked them really candidly: Why your school? With NUS, I asked them why NUS and not SMU, and with SMU, I asked the interviewer why SMU and not NUS. SMU’s law school is really young, as compared to NUS who has many notable alumni, and they can talk about their traditions and history. NUS has prestige, right, since NUS Law is more recognised. Alumni recognise NUS more, and most (if not all) of the older partners in the industry now who studied locally are from NUS law. In that sense, NUS Law kind of had an edge over SMU. That’s what they sold to me: prestige, lots of alumni, tradition, history.

But with SMU, I could tell that they really tried their best to answer our queries. As a whole school, I really liked the vibes. They told me that while they may be young, that is their edge: they’re young, so they’re a lot more flexible, and so they wouldn’t be tied down by certain traditions or ways of doing things. They’re a lot more willing to listen to students and figure out ways to improve. That was what I was really into!

Teaching Style

On top of that, SMU’s way of teaching is very different too! It’s seminar style. So we don’t do the old lecture-tutorial system. And I slept through every single lecture in JC. I tried, I just can’t. Lecture-tutorials just don’t work for me! I wasn’t going to just go to NUS thinking that maybe because it’s uni, I’ll take it more seriously–I knew for a fact that it wouldn’t change: I’m not going to sit in an audience of 400 people and just listen to a lecture. In a lecture, I just don’t feel personally involved in the learning.

But with SMU, there’s one 3 hour seminar for one course unit a week. That whole 3 hours at the start was very intimidating. At the start of it, it felt like i was just sitting through multiple Math papers; each was 3 hours long, and you’re just racking your brains out sitting there for such a long time! But in that sense, I had to take responsibility for my own learning. Since SMU grades class participation, every class is kind of graded: it makes me come to class prepared and take charge of my own learning. I was all for taking charge of my own learning, and that’s why I chose SMU. After one year, I think that kind of learning style suits me the best because I get to be very personally involved in class. It’s more of an interaction between the professor and a class of around 40 students, rather than them spoon-feeding us information and having us absorb it; and I really enjoy it.

On the other hand, NUS is starting to try out seminar-style teaching for some modules, but not all. Most are still lecture-tutorials. And there are actually some professors that came over from NUS to SMU, and many of these professors are the writers of the textbooks that are used to study the law. It kind of just makes me feel like if there’s anything, I can just approach the professor and ask him what he’s writing in his book. These professors also shared that having been in both NUS and SMU, class participation is not as big as a deal in SMU.

In SMU, class participation is a school wide thing even if you take modules in other schools/faculties, but not so much in NUS. The professors shared that they can actually tell the difference between the students in the 2 schools. SMU students are a lot more vocal and confident when they speak up in front of a class–they’re generally more outspoken a few years into law school as opposed to NUS students. As for NUS modules, some are lecture-tutorial style, and some do have graded class participation (this is what I heard, but I’m not sure if it’s true), but students will be more inclined to choose those that don’t have class participation as a grading component simply because it’s more comfortable for them.

SMU can be quite intimidating at first because there’s all these people who are more naturally outspoken and you feel like they’re just dominating the whole class, but the professor is usually very forgiving, and they encourage those that don’t speak up as much to speak up more. But it’s quality over quantity, so you can be that noisy person who keeps raising your hand and talking, but if there’s no substance in what you say (and it’s obvious if there’s no substance in your words, especially for Law) the professor won’t care.

The percentage for class participation depends, it ranges between 10-20%. And I would say that it makes quite a huge difference. If you don’t do really well during written examinations, if you score really well for class participation, you can pull up the grades for it. This was good for me!

In Law school, those class participation marks come in the form of things you say in class, sometimes there are presentations also! (More about the grading system later.)

I’ll tell you what to expect in the first year of Law School because I’m not in the position to give you the full overview – the truth is I still don’t know. The learning curve is steep – very steep, but once you get past the first year you’re used to it and know what to expect so better prepare yourself.

But after you study all this, sometimes, you start to think about everything in terms of the law: if i walk into a store, and I buy something from the store, I think to myself “this is the moment of offer and acceptance” although it’s implicit, it’s there. It’s legally binding. It’s all these nonsense things that come to your head.

1st Semester

The pre-assigned modules that you’ll get in your 1st semester are:

• Criminal Law
• Contract Law I
• Legal Research and Writing (more technical, teaches you research skills and writing skills)
• Singapore Legal System (SLS) (teaches you the history of the legal system in Singapore, and how our legal system comes about teaches you more of the technical stuff–like what does stare decisis mean – all these weird greek/latin words that law people use)

Criminal law is very interesting: maybe there’s a reason why they put criminal law as one of the first few modules. Because it’s not easy, but it becomes kind of relatable since we kind of grew up with all this “drama drama” and with criminal law, it makes you feel like you’re able to apply whatever you’ve learnt on those drama-ramas that you’ve watched to a bit more of real life. And that was fun. Criminal law was really fun.

Contract law was also quite common sense; like offer acceptance. I offer you something, you accept it. Is there meeting of the minds, did both of us intend to contract? Something like that. it’s quite common sense, it’s easy for one to grasp the concept, so maybe that’s why they started off with these aspects of the law.

2nd Semester

In Semester 2, you do:

• Contract Law II (SMU is different from NUS in the sense that we split contract law into 2 modules, I think NUS does it all in 1, and SMU splits it into 2)
• Legal Research and Writing II (0.5 course unit module, means it takes up half the time; 0.5 modules are either 3 hour lessons for half a semester, or 1.5 hours every week instead of 3; weightage is also halved)
• Tort Law

Tort Law is about personal damages. If someone hits you with a car and you want to sue a person for compensation, you’re suing for your own personal injury; or if someone caused you psychiatric harm, or medical negligence. Tort law is very interesting also; it’s everywhere in our lives. And sometimes you start to wonder: this person did this to me, can I sue him? (just kidding)

For example, for the class participation thing you don’t really know how much you need to speak up in class, how much effort you need to put in, how well-prepared do you have to be to secure an A or A+ for class participation. You’ll have to figure out all this by yourself.

You’ll have to train yourself to think very analytically because when they give you hypothetical situations to work with, you have to think how you would have to argue your case. The best part about it is that there’s no right or wrong. As long as you can set up a case for it, it makes sense, it’s compelling, you can argue whatever you want! This means that you can have a different POV from your professor, and they won’t be able to tell you that you’re wrong, as long as you are convincing; that’s one of the more interesting aspects of studying law.

The hardest thing is that at the start when you’re not that well versed in the law, you don’t really know what it’s all about so it’s very hard to understand what the textbooks are trying to say. I read very slowly, then I’m like.. what are you trying to tell me, what is this all about? There’s some legal concept there, but I don’t really know what it is essentially, what I have to pick out. But when you get used to it, it becomes a much simpler process.

I read a lot of textbooks and cases–those are where you get most of the things you need to learn from. Cases are very long, I’m so annoyed by how long they are–can they just be succinct? But no, they just blabber non-stop. Shorter cases can be 20-30 pages, some reach over 60 plus.

The first few weeks of law school, the textbooks professors assign for you to prepare before class can stretch over 90 plus pages, hundreds of pages sometimes. How much time you spend boils down to how fast you are able to pick out the main points: for example if the professor picks out this particular case to read, you have to figure out what the ruling is, what the ratio decidendi (the rationale, and most important part of the case) is. You have to figure it out fast enough. Seniors’ notes really helped me a lot, but it cannot be the only thing you rely on. It can only complement and shorten the process: before I read the whole judgement of any case, I read seniors notes first to get the gist of it and find out what I should be looking out for. But I wouldn’t 100% trust what they’re writing because you should always decide for yourself.

I think everyone will find their own way of studying and preparing for class. The professors might prepare the seminar outlines maybe 1-2 weeks before the start of the semester, and the hardworking students will start pre-reading and preparing themselves a few weeks in. But not me! The way I do it is every week I look at the requirements and then I go for it. I prepare just well enough for me to go to class and give valuable input – I think I only read about half. I feel that if you learn everything before class, you might as well don’t even attend class anymore. You can never finish reading, you can never! If you do, that means you won’t have a life. And that’s sad. Please have a life 🙁

We definitely have modules outside of law!

In SMU, we have different baskets of modules like Tech & Society, Civilisations, Capabilities–and these are university wide modules that every student has to fulfil. You have to fulfil one or 2 modules in each of these baskets to fulfil the university requirements. That’s standard.

Depending on which school (faculty within SMU) you go to, you need to take about 1-2 modules per basket. For example, for school of law, you only need to clear one module in the tech and society basket, as opposed to a student from another school that would need to clear 2.

I took 3 law modules that were pre-assigned to me in the previous semester that I just finished, and then I bidded for one more. SMU adopted this bidding system, but I had to bid for one more mod called Critical Thinking in the Real World (CTRW) (under the capabilities basket) – so I cleared that basket. The modules have students from all schools (faculties)!

The whole bidding thing in SMU, I don’t know whether it’s smart or stressful. I’m not sure how NUS does it, but every semester, the school will give you E-dollars, then you essentially bid for the courses you want. For example, let’s say the capacity of a class is 40 people, you have to pray that you are within the first 40 highest bids.

The courses that are more popular would definitely be a lot more expensive. CTRW is a very expensive module, not just because it’s interesting, but because people think it’s an easier module to do well in. If I’m not wrong, I bidded for it for like 51 E-dollars, and that’s a lot. Compared to another module in the same basket that I could have taken to clear that basket, I think the other one was just like 17-20 E-dollars? This is just to give you the idea that you have to manage your E-dollars and not just splurge on one module.

If you have left over E-dollars, it carries over to the next semester, but every semester they’ll give you more money, like an allowance. It’s around 50-100 or somewhere in between. But it’s enough for most people. Some people might overbid for a course–that means you have to analyse the past year ones. What’s the median and what’s the mean. If I’m not wrong, people will place their bid slightly above the median just to be safe. But then some people might overbid–like I told you that module was around 18 E-dollars, then some people may bid like 30 dollars – you just waste money. You kind of have to figure out how you want to spend your E-dollars: whether it’s worth it, whether it’s within your course requirement.

With this, of course there’ll be snakes; people try to find out what other people are bidding, then bid higher than them; maybe you hear friends betraying one another, but form my own experience, not really. My friends are very helpful when it comes to bidding. As a law student, most of the Law modules you have to take are pre-assigned. But if you are a student from another school, most of the modules that you have to take, you have to bid yourself.

When bidding season comes about, that’s all SMU talks about: what they bid for how much. You can bid with friends also. If you want to go for the same class, you bid for that one specific class and put the same amount of money. So if you get in, you get in together. If you get rejected, you get rejected together. That’s how people try to be in the same class as their friends in SMU.

In SMU, a perfect GPA is 4. A+ is 4.3 (the 0.3 is just an extra mark that helps you bring your other modules), A is 4.0, A- is 3.7, B+ is 3.3, so on and so forth. So in Sem 1 I took 5 modules, everything was 1 except Criminal Law (1.5 course units) and SLS (0.5) – I got straight A- for my first semester except for one, so you just add up your GPA and divide by weightage!

Here’s an example: for tort law, class participation is 10%, then there are these other group presentations where they might assign you a case or a problem, then as a group you put your heads together and figure out a solution (like a best course of action). There’s also this nutshell report thing, where the professor assigns you a case and you present on the case and tell the class what the facts are, and what the outcome of the case is. That’s also 10%. Group presentation is also 10%. About 7 weeks in, you have this mini midterms thing. It’s a 1.5 hour exam where they give you a mock scenario, then you need to use the law to come up with the best course of action for whoever you’re advising. That’s 10%.

Then there’s this 3 hour final exam that’s 60%. Final exams have the highest weightage, about 50-60%. It’s a lot, but I think Law School exams are really fun also. It’s fun in the sense that they give you this nonsensical scenario with very screwed up people, then you’re just trying to figure out what they are doing and why they’re doing the things they do. And advise them on the law. It’s actually really fun. You’re just typing nonsense into your laptop for 3 hours straight and then you submit it. That’s another reason why I enjoy studying law, it’s not just memorising and then churning out essays. You might think that open-book exams mean that you don’t need to memorise anything: that’s true, but you also need to understand the law very very well for you to be able to apply within the time frame they give you. Otherwise, you spend most of the time during exams flipping through the notes you have, and you might not be able to find the answers too.

The maximum number of modules you can take as a student is 6. And nobody will go there because 6 is intense. Honestly, 5 is quite intense already. First semester I took 5, Second semester I took 4. Usually it’s around 4-5 modules and that’s spread out over 4 years for Law alone.

I actually got a double degree in Law and Econs. That programme is 5 years, and if I want to do the double degree, every semester I have to do 5 mods to clear all the requirements. But, last semester, I took 4 so I guess I’m out. I think I’m going to drop it. When I first applied for it, it was just a box to tick “Would you like to consider taking the double degree?” I thought why not, and then they gave it to me. Ater going through a year of Law School, I don’t think it’s necessary for me to pursue econs as a secondary degree, so I think I’m going to drop it.

There’s this stereotype about Law students, that Law students have no life, basically they just mug. It’s true and not true, it really really depends on how you want to spend and manage your time. The good thing about SMU is that it’s just a 3 hour seminar for each module, and if you take 4 modules it’s not much. So I had 3 day school weeks, and at most, I would have one class in the morning and one in the afternoon. I was like Wait, is this even school? All this time, how am I going to spend it?

Mugger students who fit into the stereotypes of Law students not having a life will spend all the other time studying, being in the library studying for class. But that wasn’t for me; I didn’t want to just study Law. I’m in SMU DB, and even though I think I spend a lot more time in the gym rather than in the library, I’m doing okay. It means giving up a lot of other things like maybe Netflix, so most of my time I split between studying and heading to the gym. So at first, you might feel really stressed, but after a while, you figure out which way of studying works best for you and you get into a routine!

Yes and no. Yes in the sense that most of the competition comes from yourself. Because you want to do well, naturally you’ll view other people as your competitors, but that’s sad. I actually know people who are like that, who view their own friends as competitors, and I wasn’t into that. But the friends that I’m close to in Law school help me a lot, and I hope I help them! It’s really up to you, If I feel. It’s competitive maybe if you’re in class and you know that class participation is graded, and there’s this one guy that just keeps talking non-stop and then you just want to outdo that person, then maybe it’s competitive. But I don’t view it that way, I don’t view it as a must for me to speak up. Honestly there are times when I’m just silent throughout class. If that class I didn’t prepare much, I just jolly well keep quiet and listen to what others have to say. But if I’m confident of what I’m saying, that when I speak up more. I think it really depends on how you view it and your own attitude because if you’re not competitive.

I’m very happy when my friends do better than me – I feel like when you choose to surround yourself with people like that and distance yourself from people who are more toxic and more competitive, you’re gonna have a good life. It’s really about supporting each other. Usually, my friends are willing to share resources, help each other out and discuss legal issues.

Before I joined Law School, my senior told me this: At the end of every semester, you feel like you’re studying for a whole A Level. This is what I expected, and kind of became a reality. We place quite a lot of importance on the final exams also. Maybe that’s why the seniors say that the final exams feel like you’re studying for A levels all over again.

It’s not true in the sense that A Levels was big. It’s a big deal because it literally decides where you go next. So I’d say it’s 60-70% true. You generally don’t place as much importance on these exams as compared to A Levels at the end. But in University, the intensity is different because from week 1, I felt it already. I felt like I had to study consistently. It’s not like cramming knowledge and memorising things – like in JC where I sleep through lectures and tutorials then one month before exams start studying.

No, it doesn’t work that way in law school. If you want to do well, consistency is key… ugh so cliche, but it’s true. As long as you’re consistent, key things to understand will stick with you. It’s an open book exam, so I print out all my notes and make sure to organise it in a way that I know from a flip of a bookmark that I can get to that particular page and I’ll be able to write down what I need to write. That’s more important.

It’s definitely more intense than JC, just that the intensity is spread out. It was not just when the time became very critical that I focused on acads, you can’t do that in university.

My internship is starting at a law firm, mostly criminal practice and some family law – I’m not sure what to expect of it, and I’m a bit scared to be honest – I don’t know what’s in it for me!

There’s this pro bono thing that I’m doing every week at the state courts. It’s at a legal clinic, and I write case notes. For this legal clinic, the person that comes in to seek legal advice; what is she being charged for, and what’s her story? Why does she deserve mitigating factors? Why is she arguing that he’s innocent? Case description: what is the story? What’s the legal issue that this person is facing? What’s the recommended course of action that the lawyer is advising? They’re called case notes, case briefs.

I went into law school for the intellectual rigour, not to become a lawyer. I’m not 100% sure of it now, even though now I’m 60-70% sure that I’ll become a lawyer. But I didn’t think that far. I think that it’s a bit unreasonable; I shouldn’t be expected to know what I want to do just fresh out of JC , to be honest; give me a few months, applying to all these universities and I’m expected to know what I want as a career for the next 10 years? no! I didn’t try to think that far because I didn’t have anything to say. I just focused on what I wanted out of a university education. I wanted academic rigour. I wanted something that would stimulate me intellectually, something that I’m interested in that’s very multidisciplinary. More conceptual things rather than engineering.

I felt like a business degree was too general, and I felt like law was the closest to whatever I wanted. I wanted the intellectual rigour, because I felt that I was very stupid in JC, I still think I am, but because of the way they train you to think, you become a lot more analytical and write better. These are all technical skills I wanted to learn. I wanted to learn more concepts, kind of a social science kind of thing. To an extent, I would even argue that Law is a social science – as much as we have to abide by the law, we have to apply whatever happened in previous cases to future cases; we can still argue why we can feel that the judge is right or wrong, and who should have been different. I like the idea that there’s no right and wrong and it’s up to me how I want to decide the case, as long as I don’t stray from the precedence. And even if I do stray from the precedence, I get a chance to argue why this case is deserving of setting a new precedent in itself. Learning to me becomes not just absorbing content, but absorbing it, processing it, and forming an opinion about it. In law school you really have to be opinionated. That’s what I like about it. It forces me to think, forces me to take a stand, and see what is it that I feel is right and argue for it.

It’s very interesting overall, and very different from being in secondary school and JC. I think to sum it up I was very interested in the acads, learning about things.

That might be because the origins of SMU Law grew out of its business school. Business school first introduced business law for them to learn better. From there I think it branched out to establishing a law school. So it might be more corporate focused because of its origins, but I think because in recent years some notable profs from NUS came over, and so there are definitely a lot more options now.

In NUS law, you might get more opportunities to study more niche areas of the law (like shipping law, maybe?) there’s a lot of different types of law, and you may not get that many options in SMU. But for less nice areas of the law, SMU has it. We’re not just focused on corporate and contract law, really we don’t lose out, I feel. We may lose out on the variety of modules available but other than that it wasn’t that big of a deal to me.

I think people may be worrying about that even before they enter law school because they’re attracted to the whole idea of having more choices. You might not even know what these choices are, and it sounds great to have options, but you don’t know what these areas of the law entails, and you don’t even know whether you’re interested in it.

I did get swayed by it, because there’s more options! But I realised that I didn’t know what to do with them, and whether I would go for them. So I decided to just focus on the things I knew that I would appreciate a lot more. I would say don’t think so far, unless you already know what you’re interested in (like your dad is a lawyer that does tax law or something and you are certain that tax law is your passion). But most people don’t know what part of the law they want to go into, so it wasn’t that big of a factor to me.

SMU also has this compulsory overseas semester thing, and since I wasn’t able to go to an overseas uni, I was hell-bent on making sure that I would get overseas exposure. SMU makes sure that 100% of their students are promised overseas experience, be it for OCS or exchange. But not NUS. NUS doesn’t promise that; that’s why I chose SMU.

I can’t tell you based on personal experience, but honestly, I don’t think so! There’s this very prestigious job in the Attorney-General chambers. In recent years, the number of SMU graduates are almost the same as the number of NUS graduates. If you apply to a firm and one of the firm’s partners used to be for NUS, they might favour NUS graduates more, and that’s why SMU might lose out in the end. But in terms of employability attractiveness, I don’t think we lose out, if we are not better. That’s what I hear, but I cannot give you experience because I’m not employed anywhere.

Why not NUS Halls

I wasn’t that big of a fan of the whole hall system, because I have to earn points to stay in halls, I felt like it defeats the purpose. I didn’t want to be forced to have a hall life. If I did anything less because Law school was busy, I didn’t want to have an additional burden/pressure. I felt like the hall life was also about connections, to stay in hall you need people to write recommendation letters for you. As a Law student, I feel like I would have less time, and fomo because my hall friends would be participating in a bunch of things I wouldn’t have time to participate in. I know some of my friends went to NUS because of their halls, but NUS Law is in a building in the middle of botanic gardens. There are shuttle buses to shuttle you in between Bukit Timah and the halls, but I think I would feel very trapped: trapped in Bukit Timah and in Kent Ridge.

Prinsep Street Residences

SMU lacks the hall life, but if I’m not wrong the school is going to try to implement something like that in the future and have some experimental hall life thing, but I got to experience hostel life because my scholarship offered me a 1 year stay at Prinsep street residences. But it’s nothing like halls because there’s no activity requirement; if I want to join, I join, but if I don’t, I stay in my room. I had my friends there, and it was nice to be a bit independent and not stay at home all the time.

Near the hostel, there’s this bar called SMOOBAR near where SMU is, so sometimes at night my friends and I have a quick pint. Those are the social things that you get to participate in also! SMU’s hostel is a bit more pricey to stay in. But I won’t say that our student life is lacking simply because we don’t have halls; there’s a lot of CCA options and it’s up to you to explore and see which group you want to be a part of in uni. As long as you can find your own little group, it’s not lacking. In fact it’s a lot more liberating! We are in the heart of the city and there’s a lot of things you can do there, a lot of things to explore. (Personal opinion, it just feels nice to me.)

The best part about SMU is its location! I stay in the hostel because the scholarship gives me a free one year stay at the school’s hostel. If you face a certain direction, you turn right, Dhoby Ghaut, you turn left, Raffles City, go up straight ahead is Little India, go diagonally to the right a little bit is Bugis. Behind Fort Canning. It’s a lot of things and it’s really happening. I kind of liked the whole city campus life, I was into that and I really enjoyed it a lot. And my hostel was in the CBD; I felt like I was just there; I was in the scene, in the city the whole year round.

I think a lot of girls who go to SMU feel the pressure to dress up and wear makeup and look nice, but I’m not one of those. Everyone dresses so well, you would think that they’re out to shop or to go out. They just look so good, and I wonder how they put in the effort. But it’s alright, I’m quite lupsup anyway.

This whole process is so difficult because you feel like you have to choose something, and you have to choose the right one because it sets the entire life trajectory. I honestly just want to tell people that there’s no right or wrong answer.

There really isn’t. And you shouldn’t expect yourself to know everything fully because you dive into a course. You really have to figure out what is important to you. Not to say it wouldn’t change in the next 4 years, but definitely the bigger things; for me, making sure that I have fun learning was very important, so I’m particular about what I study.

If you’re not certain about what you want to do in the future, don’t try to think that far. You won’t be able to decide what you want to do in the future just by thinking, just by searching. I believe you actually need to get some hands on experience first. So don’t try to think so far in: this is what I want to be. Especially if you’re a girl and you haven’t had the time to think before applying!

Don’t think of it as a zero-sum game, if you hate it, then you’re stuck. I kind of delved into Law without much law, When I applied, I was 80% certain I wasn’t going to do law. I had to accept law in May, and I only thought about doing law 3 weeks earlier. Ask your gut a little bit more, think through what you want, and don’t compare with your other decisions! (Unless you really hate your life so much that you want to leave.)