With the first day of law school just short months away, I'm beginning to feel my first real twinges of anxiety. In the coming weeks and months, I expect this anxiety, fostered in the greenhouse of competitive classes and aggressively curved grades, to sprout, swell and blossom into full-fledged impostor syndrome.

So I have that to look forward to.

In an attempt to stave off this unhappy eventuality, I have been ravenously devouring every morsel of law school information I can find. My Twitter feed is a turgid cascade of lukewarm takes from prominent law professors. My Amazon wishlist groans beneath the weight of prep books I can't afford to buy, let alone read in the next 61 days.

Did you know that there are memorization apps for The Constitution, The Federalist Papers and Bastiat's The Law? Neither did I, until I downloaded them all yesterday.

As a final measure, I have downloaded some twenty episodes of The Law School Toolbox Podcast, which professes to cover in immense detail virtually every aspect of the law school experience.

In today's episode, the hosts discussed why law school is difficult for most students. One of the many good points they made was that people today consume too much information. It used to be that you could go to school and just focus on your classes.

Now, they said, the sheer quantity of immediately-available information about the legal industry leaves people feeling obligated to be aware of everything—not just class material—all at once.

The irony of hearing this from a podcast I downloaded out of exactly that sense of obligation was not lost on me.

It made me consider similar statements I'd recently read from Tim Ferris, who famously refuses to even read the news, and Peter Matthiessen, whose beautiful meditations in The Snow Leopard have left me thinking a lot about mindfulness and staying focused in the present.

I'm not ready to say that information is the enemy. I can readily counter my misgivings about TMI with anecdotes about Bill Gates reading 50 books a year, or lived experience confirming the career value of maintaining an active presence on social media.

I like to feel plugged-in. Sue me.*

However, given the circumstances, I think I might calm down a little bit about my preparations and instead focus on getting really good at focusing on one thing at a time.

With a trained and quiet mind, albeit relatively empty, I figure you can probably perform better in law school than you could with a busy, disorganized mind bubbling over with the day's legal news and political crises.

Wish me luck.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to share this post and then spend the rest of the night glued to Twitter tracking what kind of engagement it gets. Might check a couple legal articles too.

*Please don't sue me. I don't have enough training to defend myself or enough money to pay for someone else to do it. Besides, I don't own any good stuff.