Law Schools

Law Schools Offering Games, Therapy Animals, And Yoga To Calm Exam Anxiety

Let the condescending coddling commence!

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Sound dogSchools don’t want their students to fail, so they’re a little jumpy about their students’ exam stress — especially if those students might drop out and take their precious tuition money with them. So law schools are open to most anything that could help their students excel, or at least tread water until the checks clear. To that end, schools have concocted a whole mess of activities to “de-stress” all the nervous pupils cramming for Contracts.

And most of these new initiatives are all kinds of lame coddling, ranging from contrived games to puppies, because law schools are pathologically incapable of being cool.

As Karen Sloan of the National Law Journal reports:

With final exams looming, about 100 students at the University of St. Thomas School of Law last week threw away their stresses. Literally.

They wrote what was causing them angst on a piece of paper, fashioned those sheets into paper airplanes, and simultaneously launched them from the fourth floor of the school’s glass atrium to the floor below where they could win prizes by hitting targets.

The inaugural “Flight of the Paper Airplanes” was intended to help students decompress as they move into finals period, an always tense time on law campuses, and send the message that they aren’t alone in feeling anxious.

What manner of bulls**t, touchy-feely corporate management seminar spawned this? Write down your stress and throw it away?!?

Now, the natural impulse is to mock the millennials who need all this nonsense to deal with basic exam anxiety. No doubt, many of you reading this have already gleefully resorted to spouting stuff like:

  • By gum we never needed no “stress note airplanes” when we took our tests!!!
  • If those special snowflakes think this is stressful, then they can never be attorneys like we are.
  • In my day, we took that stress and worked our butts off. Me? Oh, well I failed the bar three times and have a solo practice that barely stays afloat, but those kids make me so mad with their yoga.

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This is all, of course, stupid. Past generations absolutely indulged in all measure of stress-relieving distractions right before exams. Historically these were unofficial customs like massive parties, mass streaking, or campus-wide yelling. And while the school may never sanction these activities, they certainly don’t punish them either.

Today’s students aren’t necessarily any more soft than those of yesteryear just because the games they play are different. But there is something noxious about this New Age, corporate therapy schtick. For example, the University of St. Thomas could have just held a “Flight of the Paper Airplanes” and nobody would bat an eye. It’s a dumb, juvenile diversion before finals and sounds like fun. But then they had to go and have everyone write a letter to the “Stress Santa” on their airplanes, which is the exact brand of condescending garbage that we went to law school in hopes of escaping. Just treat them like the adults they actually are… by letting them play with paper airplanes in peace.

But of course a law school had to turn its de-stressing effort into a Type A activity. WE WILL DE-STRESS YOU!!! WRITE A NOTE AND STROKE IT WHILE YOU PET THIS DOG DOING YOGA!

Look, if a school wants to help, just offer up a fun activity or have a dog around or — better yet — let the students come up with their own mischief and look the other way. Don’t set out to alleviate anxiety because all that does is refocus everyone on the idea that they’re supposed to be anxious. It ceases to be a distraction when it’s officially set up as “Enjoy this exam-period stress reliever for the next week while you take your major, semester-defining exams.”

Or, better yet, exert half of the resources devoted to figuring out the next killer de-stressor to figuring out ways to impart legal know-how on students that don’t make them terrified at the end of the semester. Maybe the students can handle their own stress on the back end of the semester and the school can handle the “not making people stressed in the first place” part.

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But that might require a radical overhaul of the law school method, so perhaps it’s easier to just throw more dogs and massage tables at the students.

From A to Zen: Law Schools Offer More Antidotes for Final Exam Angst [National Law Journal]

Earlier: Yale Law School Going to the Dogs?

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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