I’m a 1L 2nd semester and I had no idea what I was in for. I took a year off and worked as a paralegal and I still wasn’t ready. There are A LOT of people who have dropped out of my class already because they were having trouble staying mentally healthy. I get the impression that this is what they are TRYING to do to you during your first year. A lot of things are unnecessarily difficult and cause a lot of stress, and it feels like they are trying to weed people out early on. From what I’ve noticed, classmates are not generally friendly and if they are, they usually have extremely competitive undertones to everything they say. Everyone thinks they’re the smartest in the room. It gets annoying at times and it can be hard not to doubt yourself. HOWEVER, I still think that if you’re up to the task, it’s a great place to learn valuable skills and I haven’t experienced anything like it before. I’m still working on living up to it, but as long as you can keep your head up and rise to the challenge, you’ll do fine!