Friday, February 04, 2011

Law School - Christmas Exams

Christmas exams were stressful, but not as bad as they could have been. This year the faculty decided not to have Christmas exams count unless they will help our grade at the end of the year. There was some debate about doing things this way. Typically first year law students don’t do well on their Christmas exams but do much better in April. But the fear is that if the exams didn’t count, students wouldn’t take them seriously. Are you kidding me? They hand-picked a group of over-achieving perfectionists and they think we won’t work hard for our exams? They did say we were intelligent. We can all figure out that this is a great opportunity to give it our best shot and see how we are really doing. Besides, we are paying big bucks for this kind of feedback. I was taking it seriously. And I seriously realized how much I am not thinking like a lawyer.

I went into the exams feeling fairly confident about my knowledge of the law, but a little shaky on my expression of it. I walked away from the exams thinking I hadn’t done a bad job. Not a great job. But not a bad one, either. I did have my open memo mark back, and that was disappointing. But there was nothing I could do to change that mark now.

Christmas was busy with work and Christmas. Not much of a break for me, but the paycheques were nice. I am looking forward to getting back my exams to see how I really did.

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