Posts Tagged ‘exams’

To start off, I think I accidentally omitted a critical point from my last post. Regarding money and such, given the current economy (oh no! another “economy” post … please, stick with me) the metaphorical “buck” has to stop somewhere — and it certainly cannot be with young, impressionable early 20-something pre-law students. What I mean is, so many college undergraduates, or recent graduates (myself included, in both instances), view becoming a lawyer as a very lofty and prestigious goal. Everyone often hears about doctors and lawyers being coupled together when referring to “good” careers. So, from the get go, many young people are pressured by their parents or mentors to follow on of these paths (I suppose, business being the other desired career field).

To add to this idealism of becoming a lawyer, so many law schools publish radically skewed statistics regarding employment and salaries of graduates, in an effort, I guess, to recruit young graduates to come to their school and fund their programs via the extremely high tuition payments I mentioned in my last post.

To be honest, it is very disturbing to me how some institutions are able to influence young people into giving over tens of thousands of dollars (perhaps over $100K or $150K) in loans, which cannot be bypassed by filing for bankruptcy, in return for a law degree that perhaps will not further their career goals much more than if they had foregone law school altogether. There seems to be a certain amount of preying on eager young adults and it seems that perhaps some kind of regulation or oversight is necessary.

There may be some fairly strict ABA policies in place now that limit the amount of increase in accredited schools, but maybe more is needed. For instance, maybe some schools just need to be shut down (in the extreme), or maybe there should be some oversight body that ensures schools are distributing realistic employment statistics and data that actually reflects a graduate’s prospects. Again, given the state of the legal market, the environment may be ripe for producing a significant portion of our generation (or perhaps 5-10 years) of graduates entirely and quite literally lost in debt. The buck has to stop somewhere and I find it very troublesome to place that responsibility on those just beginning their professional lives when so much more could be done by those with much more experience and with much more control in their, as well as others’, professional lives.

Also, grades came out. Earlier in the year, I think some upperclassman sent out an email something to the effect of: “Don’t worry 1Ls. Somewhere in the wilderness when you were born, a wolf howled and there and forever determined your law school GPA.” How true. I don’t want to say that all law schools grades are entirely random so as not to discredit anyone’s hard work and persistence (especially those with really good grades), but I will say this: remember that Elements class that I was so sure to fail in??? Yeah, somehow, someway, I managed to get an A. So, once again, law school grades are, as far as I am concerned, random.

I was surprised the intruder hadn’t activated the death trap I had sprung for it. I had it set up right in a path that I had seen the mouse traverse. Upon closer inspection I noticed that while the trap was intact, the peanut butter bait had disappeared.

This is no ordinary mouse.

I was at a Christmas party last night a few blocks away and the host, my friend James, gave me a couple glue traps he’d picked up from Metro Pest Control. You can even close them up so they make a little tunnel so you don’t have to look at the victim struggling for life. Hey, I didn’t want it to come to this! I thought the mouse would just submit to the snap trap and die instantly and with a little dignity. But nooooooo! It had to cleverly thwart my diabolical efforts to kill it. I’m very curious to know how it managed to eat the peanut butter – and all of it at that! – without springing the trap. Seems like quite a risky business for just a little peanut butter.

Anyway, I had my civil procedure exam yesterday. Logistically, I was a wreck. I didn’t find out the exam was at 3PM (as opposed to 10AM) until midnight the night before. When I got to Greene a half hour before test time, I glanced at the room assignment board and saw I was in the wrong building. So I double-timed it back to Warren, walked into the room, and finding no one there, walked right back out. I looked at the room assignment board in the lobby of Warren and saw that I had looked at the room assignment for people hand writing the exam. So I ran back to Greene. Luckily, there were still plenty of good seats available.

All throughout exam season I had been working off the assumption that this particular exam was a four-hour in-class test. Apparently all of us thought that because when the proctor wrote on the board that it was in fact a three-hour exam, people started freaking out. As far as I was concerned, three hours was better than four because that was one less hour I had to spend writing the exam. But that was only a good thing so long as our professor had written a three-hour exam. So someone had to be sent out to double check. It turned out that he had written a three-hour exam and we were all just wrong.

After the three hours raced by, I felt pretty good about the exam. It seems that I’m having the opposite law school experience from most 1Ls I know. They were all positively giddy after the torts exam. I wanted to die. They all commiserated about the ridiculousness of civ pro. But I loved it.

I think the key to happiness in 1L year is to live nowhere near the law school, never spend a second there that you don’t have to, and spend all your free time with people who are not in law school.

Hey all avid readers, sorry for the delay in posting. Exams took up my time for a while. Well, in order to effectively post on how exams went I will probably have to semi-”out” myself. That is, to do justice to how I experienced these tests, I will have to pretty much give away which section I am in at Chicago. I’m not too worried though because, first, the only people that would really know me then would be my classmates (and no one in my class seems to read this blog anyway, or if they do, they don’t care enough to ever talk about it). And second, I don’t think I’ve said anything particularly controversial here and I don’t plan to either (after all, nothing online is truly anonymous — or so the administration tried to tell us at orientation).

Anyway, I had one 8-hour take-home exam and one 3-hour in-class exam. The in-class exam was pretty much a blur. My preparation for it consisted of making my own outline, reviewing other outlines (previous students’ who had my professor, not commercial ones), skimming through a hornbook/E&E, and taking all the posted exams from past years while reviewing the professor’s memos and past student answers. So even though the 3 hours was a blur, it was a prepared blur. But I will say this: even though I had been under timed conditions at home with these past exams, when I finally got into the test room itself, my heart was pounding and the first five minutes or so was a struggle to fight off nervousness and prepare a rough outline of my exam answer.

I thought some of the issues to spot were a little difficult and sophisticated such that maybe some students missed some things, but perhaps I was also looking too hard or in-depth at things. Honestly, I probably addressed certain aspects of questions that could have either been acknowledged or dismissed much more easily (a mistake on my part and my time constraints were therefore heightened). Nonetheless, I feel ok about it and am just trying to keep hope alive for a median grade.

As for the 8-hour take home, this was a but more relaxing and laid back. I didn’t really do much additional studying for this test than I had done over Thanksgiving break, which consisted solely of me making an outline. I did manage to do some group studying, but found these sessions to be hugely inefficient (but maybe there is something to be said for in-depth discussion of issues among groups of people). All in all, the second half of the exam period was actually pretty relaxing. As for the exam itself, we had a word limit and so I spent the latter part of the exam period just trying to shorten my answer — hyphenated words, contractions, shortened and less eloquent sentences, etc.

One last interesting note is this: law school is so unique, I feel. In undergrad, what you learned in class was what was tested (save for perhaps some assigned out-of-class documents to be read). Here, it seems almost the polar opposite. Classes are often largely devoted to heady policy discussions, philosophical debates, economic considerations, etc. But the exam asks: “What is the rule? Apply it here.” While it might help to know some of the policy behind the rule to justify your answer, this might only be what separates the top answers from some of the still pretty good answers. It just seems kind of silly to me, that’s all. But maybe the justification is that law school is, again, trying to teach you how to think, how to approach issues using independent thought and analysis, and so on.

I know I complained earlier in the semester, but things have become positively dreadful here at Harvard Law School. In terrifying display of unity, every first-year female at HLS has stopped putting even the slightest amount of effort into her appearance. I want exams to be over, not because they are stressful or difficult, but because I cannot stand to look at and/or deal with another makeup-less, sweatpants-wearing, sleep-deprived 1L hyper-bitch. And no, I’m not letting the men off the hook either. If I see another guy in slippers, I’m going to fucking lose it. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to wear their sweaty Sharper Image foam slippers outside of the house. YES I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU WILLIAM.

And I swear on mother’s future grave, I think some of the 1Ls are enjoying this shit. There are 1Ls always hanging around campus who I have yet to see studying. I think they are just so into the law school experience that they feel compelled to discuss and analyze every moment of the exam period. They will walk up to you as you enter the door and tell you how they studied all last night and eating microwave popcorn for dinner. It’s irritating and disgusting. If this wasn’t a competition, I might explain to them that if they didn’t spend their days telling people about their late night studying, they probably wouldn’t have to study all night.

Terrifyingly enough, I’m hearing (primarily from the idiot gossips mentioned above) rumors of sloppy, stress-induced lawcest. Every day, I hear something new and ridiculous – like a guy a cheating on his wife with a positively hideous member of his study group after they spent six hours reviewing the incredibly easy torts material. YES I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU SHAWN (SEAN?). Sadly, I’ve been unable to capitalize on this phenomenon. Perhaps it’s because I’ve continued to be a 9.5 on the sad Harvard 1-10 scale? Maybe I’ll stop showering or something.

The upperclassmen, being better than our class in practically every way, do not seem fazed at all by the exam period. They are all of normal demeanor and attire. I guess the change happens over the summer…

So anyways, law school exams are extremely easy. I adjusted my sleeping schedule so that I wake up between 9 and 10 PM. If I have an exam (take home or traditional) the next day, I spend the next ten or so hours memorizing my outline. For one exam, the subject of which I can’t name because it would probably identify my section, these ten hours represented the entirety of my studying effort. I wrote for three straight hours, basically regurgitating the outline, applying the information to the various issues as they revealed themselves.

As I have no way to grasp how well I actually did, it seems foolish to brag about my performance, BUT I DOMINATED THAT SHIT. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be near the top of my class by the end of this semester. Vault 5, how YOU doin’?