Exams- the EXTREMELY brief recap

Saturday was a big day for me. It was my last exam.

What does that mean? First and foremost, it means that I am now 2.5 years away from becoming a real lawyer (God help us all). Secondly, it means that I can sit back and begin to evaluate my habits and see what I did right and wrong (a process that I won't actually post about until I get my grades back.) Third, it means that I begin my summer job search. It is a risky strategy that I will post about momentarily. Finally, it means that I get to breath for a moment, a process that I will discuss now.

Basically, this whole breathing, relaxing thing is unreal to me. I have plenty of classmates still taking exams, so I don't want to out right dance and celebrate. Furthermore, my first three points (lawyering, evaluating, and job searching) really are lurking in the back of my mind, if not the front. I don't know what my grades will be until January, so I don't know if I successfully completed my first semester. I just know that I completed it. I don’t know that I was doing this whole law school thing right, or maybe I need time to change my ways (I think I did it right, but I need some cold hard facts to help me decide- it is the math geek in me.) And this whole applying for jobs thing, well, it is scary, hard, and I am pretty sure I just bombed a phone interview an hour ago. I really don’t want to go through that process (although my next post will have a happier, lighter tone).

So what did I learn over this exam period?
-I learned that study groups can be an amazing thing.
-That an outline should be learned backwards and forwards, that way during the exam you don’t actually need to look at it.
-That freaking out does not help.
- Conversely, cookies and coffee do help.
-Talking about the exam after the fact will only make you feel worse. You can’t change the exam, so you don’t need to be reminded of a point you may have missed.

As I turn from my first semester towards my second, I await my grades and go through the arduous task of applying for summer internships. Also, I am drinking gingerbread mochas and enjoying some sleeping in time.

Reason #631 Not to talk about an exam

Because you will only freak out about it and feel worse.
Go, try it. Go up to one of your classmates and start talking about the exam. How do you feel? Shitty? Yea, that sounds about right. Oh, he noticed that you had your palm squarely planted on your head as you were clearly angrily shaking you head halfway through? You totally want to be reminded of that wonderful moment.

Sometimes the only thing left to do is keep you mouth (and ears) shut and cross your figures. You are not going to do any better after the fact. Commiserating doesn't help.

Torts: My History

So tonight is my torts exam. I am in the library right now trying to figure out how I can cram more torts into my brain as my day time colleges are sitting down to a test, which from what I can gather, may actually come to life and murder a few 1Ls. While they are all fearing for their futures, I am contemplating my past.

Torts was a class that I had a love hate relationship with. From my very first law school faux paux of getting a hypo wrong to last night where I confidently explained theories of alternative liability, I was on the torts roller coaster.

I started confident, then quickly lost it. The feeling that I was that girl was overwhelming. At one point I was reduced to tears and resolved to never speak in class again. I went for a while with that idea. Almost a month, I was silent in class. At first, I was so nervous that I couldn't raise my hand, as if my nerves decided that the muscle won't work. Then after a while, I started to understand what my professor was asking. That is a tricky thing, because it is a task that requires a student to really get into the prof's head and think like them. Almost like some serious Vulcan mind melding.

I was still resolute in not answering anything. To stop myself, I started wearing a rubber band around my wrist. I snapped it every time I wanted to raise my hand. Turns out, I was more ambitious than I thought I was. Dear God, my wrist hurt. Finally, I couldn't handle it anymore. My wrist was red, swollen, and I was afraid I would snap a tendon in my wrist. More importantly though, I knew I knew the answer. I knew that I could make the strongest argument and just nail it (it also helps that the week before I had a major confidence boost by being on call in contracts for an hour and nailing the questions my professor threw at me.)

Medical malpractice standards: what are the arguments against the average practitioner standard? I nailed that answer. I used my professor's words to tell him exactly what he was thinking, and the look on his face was priceless. He looked at me in my dead-center-off-the-room seat, smiled and said "Exactly!"**

From that point, it wasn't exactly an easy road, but it got significantly better. I finally started to understand why things were the way they were. I actually started to understand torts.

So that brings me here, at my table of knowledge (a term I stole from an undergrad friend) in the library six hours before my exam. I am reading my outline one last time. How do I feel? The same what I always feel before an exam, nervous as hell. Still, the fact that I made it to this point, is a victory.

So here I go, into the depths of a torts exam. Hopefully I will see you on the other side.


**BTW, I intentionally left out my answer for the arguments against the average practitioner standard. I don't want to ruin the fun of figuring it out.

1 down, 2 to go

So yesterday at noon was my contracts exam. Do I feel like I owned it? I don't know. Not because I totally feel like I missed all the issues on the test. I think I hit on at least one important issue per question, most of the questions I hit on two issues. I was able to evaluate the strengths of the arguments and make a clear case for my conclusion. (Now that I typed that, I feel a little less nervous about yesterday.) The bads? The test didn't feature the topic I was totally, 100% confident on. Should that ruin my exam? No, not at all, but it would have been nice to have the "freebie." Also, the test was three hours. There was supposedly less than 3 hours of material, with time to distribute as we please. I finished all the questions in 2:55. I had five minutes to spell check (a feature that I desperately need). In theory I can say "I was distributing time as I needed it." I am not sure I can say that I was making that choice deliberately (ok, I wasn't), but maybe it was a subconscious thing.



So the exam finished and I walked out rushing through the group of classmates who got together to talk about the exam! Ahh!!!! The last thing I wanted to do was talk about it. As I walked past the crowd, I was screaming in my own head to drown out the "OMG, I totally owned that!" Talking about grades in law school is as tacky as wearing an ugly Christmas sweater at work, and not realizing you are wearing one.

Finals have descended

So here it is, day one of two reading days. Two days away from my first exam: Contracts. How do I feel about it? Actually, not bad. I am a little rust on the statute of frauds, but I do feel like I am in good shape. I've taken the idea of exam IRACing to heart. I just need to make sure I have a clear mind to spot the issues on Saturday (yes, my first exam is on a Saturday.)

Here are a few things that are on my mind:

1. The fact that my exam is on a Saturday is a little intimidating. It feels like I am taking the LSATs again, and not in a good way. Actually, let me restate that (R2d)- the LSATs never feel like a good thing.
2. I actually feel ok, but sometimes talking to other people makes me feel not ok. Stress is more contageous than the flu.
3. I am running out to ways I can cram contracts into my head at the moment. How else can I study without overstudying?
4. The library is so silent, I am pretty sure if I sneeze again, I will be stabbed.
5. Tuesday night, I dreamt about the five elements of promissory estoppel.

How does this all pan out? I'll update after the exam (but I will NOT talk about exams specifics.)

Also, just a friendly reminder- BACK UP YOUR DATA. A week before exams is not a good time to lose everything.

Almost time for finals

So first I'll address the "Make Law School Classy" Campaign:
I will call it a success. I started by posting to my Facebook feed and telling everyone what I was doing. It got a fair amount of attention from my friends and I even got a follower. The campaign lasted a week, then Thanksgiving week struck and finals preparation got fully underway. Apparently I am able to dress decently until stress hits.

Are finals stressful though? They are and they aren't. I have 3 exams this semester- contracts, torts, and econ. How do I feel? I don't know. Maybe that is a good thing because I am not wasting my energy on stress, instead I'll be ready for exams. Maybe it is a bad thing because I am not realizing what I do and don't know. That is the problem, I just don't know, and I won't know until exams come back in January.

I have been preparing though. I've done CALI lessons (an online law school quiz site) for torts. I've been going through my contracts book and doing the "Problems" tucked away in the notes sections of my contracts book. I've been doing econ questions at the end of each chapter and the questions on my professor's blog (yes, my econ teacher has a class blog. It took me a while to get used to, but I dig it now.) Also, I am feeding the superstitious side of me by getting my karma fix and counting all the goods and bads that've been happening lately. Really, what it all comes down to is karma, right?