Final Exam Prep.

I have an outline with all the rules. A lot of people are worried about remembering the fact patterns for each case which is weird to me. I read it and I remember it so there isn't much memorization to do in that department. I'm memorizing the rules that each case works with. I understand all the concepts and how to apply the rules to I feel pretty alright going into the final.

I think some people have lost their focus judging by how many computers I see opened to facebook, espn, or some other time waster of choice. I don't bring my computer with me to class just so I'm not tempted to follow suit. I think that has worked to my advantage. Physically writing the notes from class has also helped me retain the huge amount of information we've been presented with. I've been taking notes and then typing them up at home and revising my briefs if I need to.

Going into the midterm there weren't that many rules or cases to remember. Looking back from the final exam perspective this would be much less of a headache had I used each weekend to memorize each rule and modify my typed outline. I'll definitely use that in the fall.

Something entertaining

Sarah Palin recently announced that she would step down from her position in Alaska. Shortly after that she threatened to basically sue the internet and networks that would publish what they could gather from blogs. It was entertaining to imagine being the defense attorney for a blogger facing defamation charges.

I don't want to get too political but I'm having trouble figuring out which is worse: that Palin thought there was a 'department of law' or that she thought its purpose would be to make sure she didn't have to follow the law.

Midterm results

I didn't do as well as I wanted to but I still ended up with a 'high pass' on a scale of honors, high pass, pass, low pass, and fail. I think there were only 5 honors and 11 high passes given out for my section. I don't remember off the top of my head how many people are in my section but its between 40-50 people.

The errors I made were pretty much just due to not being familiar with taking a law school exam. I really just need to be more detailed and to mention which precedents came from which cases. It took me back to math classes in a way. I could always come up with the right answer but the teacher/professor was more interested in how I arrived at that answer rather than that I solved the problem. It was a good learning experience and I feel like I'm in good shape going into the final.

The class has moved on to the subjects of death, birth and property. The cases surrounding birth for whatever reason have some concepts that are weird for me to grasp. Some of the guidelines the courts like to use seem to be almost contradictory and sometimes a justice will list out guidelines only to violate them a few paragraphs later. The professor does an excellent job of clearing up issues and the t.a. I get to work with is world class in my opinion. The t.a. is motivated, loves talking about law and genuinely gets into helping you progress through the course. I plan on asking him if hes going to be tutoring at all in the fall.

I'm meeting up with my study buddy this weekend to start banging out an outline and some flash cards for the final. I feel like with the feedback from the midterm I stand a pretty good chance of getting an 'honors' for the course. Most importantly though - I made the silly mistakes on this midterm and I get to fine tune my test taking in this course rather than making them on the fall finals and having that damage my gpa.

I should really take some pictures to insert in these posts. If anybody reads this hopefully it will give them a good idea of what they are diving into. :)

Counting how many hours I put in feels goofy and occasionally frustrating ("I read this thing how many times and that miniscule concept is all that matters? ahhh!!!"). I'm up to 120 hours from the start of the course. Only 9,880 hours to go. :)

midterm update

I'll attempt to be more diligent in updating this thing. I've developed some pretty good habits for reading and briefing cases so that isn't as time consuming as it used to be. I also have a really good study buddy. She is excellent at getting things done and isn't dramatic about how much work is to be done.

The midterm went as well as it could have I suppose. I feel like I nailed the first question. The second question I argued my position well and hit a few key points but I neglected to address another point that could have been made. I'll probably get docked for it. Live and learn I suppose. I'm just glad I'm making the mistake here and not during fall semester's finals. I know the material cold though so I feel accomplished anyway.

We use examsoft which is a really annoying program. I had to install windows on my mac, so I have to use boot camp to get into windows and then examsoft restarts my computer again to lock itself into its own UI. This is to prevent you from cheating.

I didn't realize until this exam how slow others are at typing. I heard more than a few people talking about feeling disadvantaged because they were slow typists. I bang out 90 wpm or more so I guess I had a leg up. I developed my outline and I rocketed through the written portion with time to go back and edit. For the whole exam I think I had around 800 words.

The social scene here is pretty neat. Everyone is nice, outgoing and motivated. The professors are (usually!) concise and to the point. Explanations are clear and easy to understand. The T.A. is a great guy. He is very interested in helping you understand concepts and gives great test taking advice.

This place is really neat. There is an ocean view from the library and the course material is all really interesting stuff so far.