How time flies and four months passed so quickly, what I have experienced during the past semester was far beyond my expectation. I came through a lot of unexpected difficulties in these four months but in return, got even more happiness, friendship and precious experience.

Life at Duke

Located in the peaceful forest of Durham, North Carolina, Duke Law School is not only a good place for study, but also an ideal place to live. Despite that the transportation there is not very convenient if you do not have a car, the serenity of Durham creates the best environment to release you from the high-pressure modern city.

I lived off campus in an apartment with two roommates; it is not far away from law school and there are free school buses all day long. Public transportation in Durham is not convenient, so how to get to the shopping-mall is also a problem, we were lucky to have many kind-hearted friends and classmates their, they were always glad to offer us a ride when we wanted to go to the supermarket or to the airport. There are many restaurants in the campus, they are good, but we’d rather choose to cook at home with lower price and personal taste. It was a lot of fun to learn cooking in a creative way and enjoyed the food with your friends, but sometimes cooking is not an easy task especially when you were so tired after a day’s tough study, but that’s part of our life and finally after you left there, you’ll find that one of the things you missed most is your kitchen.

Besides daily life, students at Duke have many places to go during the weekends. If you prefer a more untamed outdoors, you can drive to the Duke Forest, in which you can hike, bike and they have several different trails for you to choose. If you just want to take a small break, then Duke Gardens is a good choice, located in the center of the university’s campus, Duke Gardens are not very faraway from both your dorm and the library, but they can providing an ideal venue for sunbathing, strolling, or just sit there and relaxing. The best times of the year in Duke Gardens are spring and autumn, when I was there, it was autumn, the threes in the Gardens turned into different colors, this scenery is doomed to be an unforgettable memory for me.

Duke is famous for its basketball and sports are very popular among students, the school encourages us to lead a healthy life style and take a daily study break by exercising, so the exercising facilities are very convenient for every one, the gym is near our law school and there are small swimming pool and fitness centre just around my apartment, and some of my classmates enjoyed playing golf in their spare time.

Parties are another important part of our lives; we have joined in many interesting parties, such as Halloween make up party and some special parties among Chinese students. During the International week in Duke Law School, international students from all over the world showed their different cultures and foods, it was really fun to communicate with them.

It was lucky that Nan yang and I exchanged together and we became best friends after this special semester, when we were in America, we traveled together to many place. We went to the eastern side during breaks of school work. We fly to Boston in a crazy weekend and visit Harvard and MIT. In fall break, we went north again, this time we spent five days in New York and enjoy the amazing museums there. After one semester’s hard study, we rewarded ourselves a wonderful trip to California and Nevada during Christmas. We went to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas, in our trip, we found the big advantage of being a student from Peiking University－－we have alumnus and friends all over the world. And another thing life taught us is that, every time when you feel unfulfilled or being treated unfair, you could always argue with the people in charge of it and you may get a satisfying result, sometimes you can get back hundreds of dollars.

Study

Cited as the “Harvard of the South”, Duke Law School enjoys an outstanding academic reputation, free spirit and beautiful campus. Academia at Duke Law School is among the first-tier law school in the worldwide and recently, Duke ranked 8th by the US News Law School ranking.

Duke Law provides curriculums with great diversity for students. Fall semester′s core classes including Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure, Contracts, Criminal Law, Property, Torts, and a legal research and writing course, I have taken three courses: Torts, Legal writing & Legal Research and Education Law.

Except Legal writing & Legal Research, Torts and Education are both J.D.’s credits rather than LL.M.′s. Classes for all these three courses are intensive but interesting. One of the difficult we face is the assignments of reading, it is the most typical thing for US law school but when I first came there, I was really shocked by the large amount of reading material. You cannot answer the questions professors pointed to you if you didn’t do your reading assignments yesterday. Since cases are always long and complex, brief and outline the case is really necessary, so every day, we spent a lot of time on reading and writing outline, this save us a lot of time in the final exams. Another challenge for me was the way we have the class, like most law schools in the US, Duke Law School adopts the Socratic Method as its teaching method, a class is typically composed of questions put forward both by the professor and the students, the professor will pick up one student and keep asking him a series of questions, this encourage students to think for their own, and thus can help to train the future lawyers. My torts professor always picked up four or three students in one class and every time in her class, students were so concentrated and energetic. She trained us to use logical thinking and consider not only the legal theories but also the practical elements such as whether it is a jury’s question or a judge’s question.

The professor impressed me most is the director of Education Law, Professor Wettach. She is graduated from UNC Law School and in her former life; she was a prominent lawyer fought for protect the right of the students, she worked as a lawyer but not aimed at earn large amount of money, but for the pleasure of help others. Then she went to Duke Law School and opened her own clinic, continued to help the students and parents who can’t afford the attorney fees. She is very interested in Chinese legal system and sometimes had lunch together with Nan and me, when we left there, she made a special chocolate by herself as a farewell present for us.

Except the outstanding academia provided by Duke Law School, the school also provide us rich resources of legal research; the convenient access to the resource and the best study environment. The faculty in Duke Law is warm and efficient. The library is opened twenty-four hours and always warm and bright. All classrooms and study tables have power hook-ups and web access at every seat. The law school frequently holds lunch-time seminars, field trip studies, firm interview opportunities and social gatherings. Every day we will receive a diurnal email called Duke Law Daily, which introduces all the events at the law school for the following 3 or 4 days. There are abundant resources while all the chances are open and equal to everyone-one.

Life is the best teacher, though this special semester ended so quickly, I will never forget all the things this great experience taught for me.