Orientation and how I got there

The first day of orientation finally arrived, and it was very enlightening. The best thing I took from all the welcomes and presentations is that the first year will be really, really hard, but if you do the work and get the help you need, you can be successful.

Since my goal is to encourage other people to reach for their graduate study dreams, I want to share a little about how I ended up as a first year student at Texas Wesleyan School of Law. (This may be boring if you already know how to get into law school.)

In late Spring, 2004, I started out by making a list of all the law schools in Texas and discovered Texas Wesleyan when I was compiling this list. As I researched the school, it became more and more appealing to me because it had part-time study options. As a mother of two small children, this was important to me because I was unsure of what kind of support system I would have.

The next step in the process was registering for law services (www.ldas.org) which is the organization that gives the LSAT and collects your transcripts and letters of recommendation (LORs) for law schools. I also researched test prep courses. I knew I didn't want to do a course that took weeks so I looked for short, lower cost, weekend alternatives and found the PowerScore company (www.powerscore.com). They offered a great class, and I think my score was higher because I took the course.

I took the December LSAT and chose the option of getting my scores online. I think they came within two weeks of taking the test. I completed the application at Texas Wesleyan online, and monitored the LDAS site to see when my LORs arrived. I chose to apply only to Texas Wesleyan because Fort Worth was the only place where I had the family support system I will need to get through the next three years.

If you have specific questions about this process, I would be happy to answer them specifically. Just send me and email and I'll give you more details and let you know about resources that are helpful in the process of researching, applying and getting into law school.