Final 1L Finals

Here’s what my exam days have been like this week:

• Up working on outlines until around 2 am
• Setting my alarm clock for 6 hours later and going to sleep
• Waking up after 5 or 5½ hours (before my alarm goes off)
• Studying until it’s time to head to school
• 3 to 3½ hours of multiple choice questions and essays
• Going back home and doing almost nothing the rest of the night

Happily, this only happened twice this week, Tuesday for Property and Saturday for Contracts. The rest of the week was spent in off-and-on studying and other miscellaneous activities.

Outlines are the law school equivalent of permissible cheat sheets. Each is a personally created summary of rules, cases, and notes from the whole semester that you get to use during the final exam. Ideally outlines get done early, but my exam preparation wasn’t exactly top-notch this semester, hence my finishing them the night before exams.

I came out of my Property exam feeling it was relatively easy, which probably means I missed a lot of the nuances of the essay questions. But I was just glad to be done.

I went into my Contracts final feeling generally confident, until I saw the first question. My option at that point was to either break down or slog through, so slogged through the next three and a half hours.

I came out of Contracts feeling I’d somehow missed the connection between the given facts and the law we had learned. But after overhearing some classmates’ reactions I felt somewhat better. It seemed that a good portion of the class felt the same as I did. Again, I was just glad to be done.

So I only have one more final exam this week (for Constitutional Law), then (yay!) I will be a 2L and my first year of law school will be over.

Finals week is a much bigger deal here than it was during undergrad. Most professors let you take the exam anywhere in the school (or in some cases anywhere at all), as long as you turn it in on time. That means there is a general embargo on noise anywhere besides the lobby. The library is closed to everyone besides students, faculty, and staff. The lobby serves primarily as a post-test forum for expressions of relief and commentary on the most recent exam.

Turning in an exam is also different than when I was an undergrad, mostly because ten years ago almost no one used computers for finals. Now everyone does. They say you can hand write your exams, but I’d be shocked to actually see it happen. Also, all the grading is done blindly, so each student is assigned a blind grading number to use instead of his/her name. That number goes on everything – exam booklets, scantrons, and essays.

If your essays are typed, submission is a multi-step process. They must be uploaded to an online system before the end of the exam time, so you have to watch the clock. Then a copy has to be printed (the library printers are very popular for about 20 minutes) and turned in within a certain time frame. The good soul who receives them takes each copy one by one and has each person mark the time the printed copy is turned in. She does this for every exam over the two weeks of finals.

So, this week feels like the next volume in the long series of tests that is law school: Law School Admissions Test, Fall 1L finals, Spring 1L finals, Fall 2L finals, Spring 2L finals, Fall 3L finals, Spring 3L finals, Bar Exam.

Plenty left to look forward to, huh?

Sometimes I'd Rather be Flying a Kite

I was sitting in Property earlier this week when I suddenly realized I had lost track of what the professor was saying.

Five minutes later, it happened again.

I started doodling, hoping that would help me pay attention, but I think I still spent most of the time counting down until the end of class. It felt like my mind was at capacity for the semester – nothing else was getting in.

And that wasn’t even the last class.

But, I made it through the week. Contracts helped by finishing a day early, which everyone (including the professor) enjoyed. Now all I have left for the semester are three finals.

Each of those little tabs is a reading assignment from this semester.

In other news, the Dean lost a bet with the 3Ls, and therefore shaved his mustache in the law school lobby with everyone watching. He said it’s the first time in about 30 years that a male member of his family has been clean shaven.

Also, all the squirrels are back. I don’t know what their cue was, but they seem to have all emerged from their winter hiding spots simultaneously.

And spring continues. Watching the green leaves come back is like watching a time-lapse film. Trees that were barely budding one day are full of foliage two days later. The visibility diminishes almost by the hour. On the other hand, the flowering trees seem to take turns; the white ones came out first, then the purple, then the yellow and pink…

As far as seasons are concerned, I’ve preferred Utah’s to Virginia’s. Spring in Virginia might buck that trend, though. It’s messy and somewhat noisy, but the mass and variety of life here is remarkable. And it all happens without feeling dramatic; mainly, I think, because there’s much less wind.

So Utah spring wins in at least one respect: more wind and fewer tangling trees make it much easier to fly a kite.

Happy Easter!

Ah, Spring

Is it a bad sign to dream about a judge granting adverse possession rights to a thieving blue jay? I recall the judge telling the plaintiff something like: “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.” I’m not sure what the blue jay was holding in its beak as it flew away, but the blue jay won the lawsuit.

I was also dreaming in PowerPoint that night.

(Thankfully, these aren’t recurring dreams.)

I spent a while this week filing taxes with the IRS, the commonwealth of Virginia, and the state of Utah. Between the three, Utah wins. Utah’s taxes were the simplest and took the least amount of time.

Highlights of this week:

• General Conference, part of which I watched in Richmond with a good friend.
• Four days in a row of getting outside to run (running, or any other exercise, has not been a frequent occurrence this semester).
• Having less than one month of my 1L year left (I’m having a party the evening of May 1, then sleeping in late the next day).

Happy Spring!