Don’t Pretend Time Zones Don’t Exist

The first full week of the NFL season is nearly in the books, and there are already plenty of storylines.

There were surprising performances, surprising results, and the usual reminder that everything we thought we knew in August can change once teams actually start playing games.

But perhaps no team's outlook changed more dramatically than that of the Los Angeles Rams.

The Rams entered the season as the betting favorite to win the Super Bowl. After an offseason in which they added reigning Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett and even convinced Aaron Donald to come out of retirement, expectations weren't merely high. The Rams were the team many people expected to beat.

Then they traveled to Australia.

The San Francisco 49ers beat them 27–7.

A few days later came more bad news: Garrett, who was largely ineffective in the opener while dealing with a knee problem, will undergo arthroscopic surgery and head to injured reserve. He will miss at least four games.

It's only Week 1, of course. The Rams may ultimately be fine. But a team that began the season as the Super Bowl favorite suddenly has considerably more questions than it did a week ago.

And one of those questions involves a clock.

Two Teams, Two Approaches

The Rams and 49ers had to solve the same unusual problem before their season opener: How do you prepare professional athletes in California to play a football game nearly 8,000 miles away in Melbourne?

The teams chose almost completely opposite solutions.

The 49ers arrived in Melbourne about a week before the game. Their plan was straightforward: Get there early and give their players time to acclimate.

The Rams stayed in California.

They didn't arrive in Melbourne until approximately 28 hours before kickoff. Rather than acclimating to Australian time, the Rams deliberately attempted to keep their players operating on something closer to their Pacific Time body clocks. They planned sleep schedules around it and even conducted advance testing before settling on the strategy.

This wasn't poor planning. Quite the opposite. It was a carefully researched attempt to solve the problem by essentially saying: We're not going to adjust.

Then the game started. The 49ers looked ready to play. The Rams didn't.

San Francisco scored 24 unanswered points after falling behind 7–3 and held the Rams to 290 yards of offense. Matthew Stafford, the reigning league MVP, threw for only 155 yards. Garrett didn't record a tackle.

Afterward, Rams coach Sean McVay didn't blame the travel. Nor should we. One football game doesn't establish that the Rams' travel strategy caused the loss. There are far too many variables involved.

But I'm also not booking the Rams' itinerary anytime soon.

More importantly, the Rams' experiment highlights something that can be easy to overlook when we travel for an important event. We tend to focus on the event itself, like what we need to know, what we need to bring, and when we need to be there. We may pay much less attention to whether our bodies and brains will actually be ready to perform when the event begins.

That's a lesson worth considering for law students, too. And you don't have to be traveling halfway around the world for it to matter.

Your Body Doesn't Care What Your Calendar Says

Law students travel for all sorts of reasons. They may travel for graduation, an intensive academic program, an interview, a competition, or another in-person experience. Online and hybrid students may routinely travel significant distances to attend required or optional events. And bar examinees frequently take the exam in a jurisdiction far from where they live or attended law school.

Sometimes that means crossing an ocean. Sometimes it means crossing the country. Either way, crossing several time zones can mean asking your body to operate on a schedule different from the one it has grown accustomed to.

When you're traveling for something that requires you to perform at your best, your arrival date isn't simply a travel decision.

It's part of your preparation.

Consider the bar exam.

Imagine spending months preparing for it. You've completed thousands of practice questions. You've written essays and performance tasks. You've memorized rules. You've developed strategies for timing, endurance, and handling difficult questions.

Then you travel several time zones and arrive the day before the exam. Suddenly, the challenge isn't just remembering the law.

You're trying to fall asleep earlier than usual because the clock says it's bedtime. You may be waking up when your body thinks you should still be sleeping. You're figuring out meals, transportation, and an unfamiliar environment. And then, at 8 or 9 in the morning local time, you're asking your brain to perform at its highest level for hours.

The clock on the wall changed the moment your plane landed. But your internal clock didn't.

Give Yourself Time to Adjust

That's why students traveling across multiple time zones should build an adjustment period into their plans.

You don't necessarily need to copy the 49ers and arrive a full week early. A three-hour time change obviously isn't the same as a 17-hour one, and there isn't a magic number of days that works for every person or every trip. But the principle is the same: Account for the time change rather than pretending it doesn't exist.

If you're traveling for the bar exam, arrive early enough that exam morning isn't also one of your first mornings operating on the local schedule. Give yourself time to sleep according to the new time zone, figure out where and when you'll eat, and travel to the testing site so you know exactly how you'll get there. If possible, spend some time studying or doing practice questions during the hours in which you'll eventually be taking the exam.

The purpose of arriving early isn't to squeeze in several more days of frantic studying. It's to eliminate variables.

You want waking up at the right time to feel normal. You want breakfast to be routine. You want to know how you're getting to the testing center. And when you sit down to begin the exam, you want your body to agree with the clock that it really is morning.

You've spent months preparing for what happens once the exam begins. Give yourself enough time to prepare for everything that has to happen before it begins, too.

After all, you have enough uncertainty waiting for you inside the examination room. There's no reason to bring jet lag with you.