It's Exam Time!

It's final exam time in law schools across America! And that means that law students are experiencing even more stress than usual. Recently, I have been educated that stress leads to depression, and we all know how bad depression can be for you...

So be kind to your law students (even if they have not been kind to you!). They probably are just acting out their stress. We have been handing out hard candy in our library at exam time for some years, and several years ago added disposable ear plugs to the mix -- I hope the students keep THOSE straight!

This year at the genius of Susan Vaughn, Reference Librarian Extraordinaire, we are adding an entire de-stressing event. We tried to get the deans to buy in, but they declined. So I went door to door, gathering personal donations from an inspiring number of faculty and administrators to cover the cost of 2 chair massage guys to come in-house for two 2-hour periods. At the Registrar's suggestion, we scheduled one the evening before the first 1-L exam and the other the evening before the most stressful of the required upper-level exams. We added free coffee, tea, cookies, fruit and cheese. We'll have music and handouts on handling stress and resources at the university for stress and health. So even though the chair massages only handle a small percentage of our students, everybody gets something.

Wish us luck!