3L Studying for Final Exam Realizes He Gave Up Caring Halfway Through the Semester

Duke Law 3L Matt Nelson has been taking it easy for the past few days but today finally decided to begin preparing for his upcoming Federal Income Tax exam. After only a few hours of perusing class notes and reviewing assigned readings it became clear to the 3L that the little motivation he initially had quickly disappeared as the semester progressed.

"I was surprised how good my class notes were in the beginning of the year," said Nelson. "I had written down in detail the professor's explanation about what's included in gross income and employer benefits. However, as fall break approached I noticed that my notes became much shorter, sometimes amounting to only a few lines of barely legible chicken scratch. Man, I didn't realize I stopped caring that early."

Nelson underscores that it wasn't only his class notes that tipped him off to his declining ambition.

"In the initial reading assignments there is considerable highlighting, sometimes with notes in the margins," remarked Nelson, remembering what the first section of his textbook looked like. "But as the semester went on not only did the highlighting and annotation decrease but eventually it stopped all together. I guess that's about the time when basketball season started and I began playing Internet poker again."

After Fall Break, the little studiousness and self-respect Nelson had finally vanished, again as evidenced by his class notes. A comprehensive analysis of the 3L's notebook demonstrated that after the 7 week mark Nelson stopped even taking meaningful notes, instead writing down to-do lists, comments on the professor's wardrobe, thoughts about the hottest girls in the class and the best websites he visited while surfing the internet in class. Moreover, Nelson started missing more and more classes as indicated by the high number of pages with only the words "get notes" on them.

The 3L realized that eventually he no longer cared about Fed Tax but didn't fully comprehend just how early he became a slacker.

"If you asked me, I would have said that I surely wasn't as motivated toward the end of the semester as I was in the beginning," admitted Nelson. "But it wasn't until I was confronted by my 1 subject, wide rule notebook that the truth finally hit me: for the past 6 weeks at least I didn't give two shits about personal deductions, capitalization, taxation of the family or anything tax-related."

Compared with other 3Ls, Nelson's lack of care is pretty average. According to publicly available statistics, the standard 3Ls loses motivation after fall break with some never caring to begin with and others only losing their drive with a week or two remaining in the semester.

Regardless of when the third year student stops giving any amount of shit, the conundrum for those who study the issue is why students like Nelson cared in the first place.

"Honestly, I am not sure why I ever was concerned about taking good notes or getting a good grade or even why I am studying now for this exam," stated Nelson. "I guess we law students are programmed to study hard and it isn't easy to ignore that conditioning. But, as God is my witness, I will do everything in my power next semester to stop caring earlier, if I even begin caring at all."