Finals Recap

I know, I know.

All I can say in my defense is that the memo and finals were a lot more overwhelming than anyone not in law school can imagine, and that the last thing I wanted to do over my (very short) winter break was think about school.

Sorry, my bad.

But I'm back, and happy to answer questions about finals for 0Ls that are worried or curious. Seriously. I'll answer way more frequently than I'll post.

But this is a post, and as such, let's get on with it, shall we?

Basically, the memo wasn't too bad, if you didn't leave it until the last minute. I didn't, thankfully, but I did become DEATHLY ill the weekend before it was due. Really. I don't think I left my bed/bathroom for two or three days. People had to come over and walk Bingley for me because I literally couldn't make it down the stairs in my apartment building. So my illness left me in a little bit of a time crunch as far as editing goes. I normally edit as I write, which works well for me, so my editing process is usually quite a bit less intense than most people. But legal writing is a little bit different.

In undergrad, professors gave you a page target. You could wax on poetically, change your line spacing, the font size of your periods, etc. to make it to that dreaded 20th page, and then relax, right? Not so in law school. In fact, it's the exact opposite. We are given a page limit...and a very stringent one at that. I think our page limit was 7 pages? It's been so long I can't remember. All I do remember is that I wrote what I felt needed to be in, and didn't use any flowery language or sentence lengtheners, and I think my memo was 13 pages. I had a LOT of editing to do.

After I got my memo in about three hours before it was due, I went to our huge memo party (which was a LOT of fun), and then it was time for Thanksgiving break. Of course, it's not really smart to fly 4 hours home and 4 hours back for a weekend, especially when the weekend is the one before your finals starting. So I stayed in Dallas and went to a friend's for Thanksgiving. It was REALLY hard being away from my family, but I enjoyed my break and know that staying here was the smartest thing I could have done.

Over Thanksgiving break I did take it a little easy, but I planned out my attack for finals. Knowing that once our reading week started I probably wouldn't even be looking at the outlines for my later finals, I spent a good chunk of my break completely re-working my outline for my last final (Crim), and putting together a few charts for my open-note exam, most notably a comparison of pretty much every crim we studied under the CL and the MPC. That particular chart took almost a whole day and ended up being a beautiful, beautiful document.

Then I didn't touch Crim again until the day before the final.

Our final schedule went Torts, off, Civ Pro, off, Contracts, off, Property, off, and Crim. Torts was the most stressful, because it was the first exam. I don't like to rehash exams right after they end, but normally I can stay composed. After torts I went home, fed and walked my dog, tried to call my dad, and as soon as he got on the phone I started sobbing. Uncontrollably.

It was pretty awful.

But I moved on, got my shiz together, and made it back to the library an hour later to study for Civ Pro. Our civ pro exam was multiple choice, so that made it a little less pressure, but looking at it now it also means that the curve is just that much more tight. I didn't have another break down after Torts, except for when I yelled at the undergrad that was having a very LOUD conversation in the law library.

Ugh. SIDE NOTE: If you are an undergrad at a school that has a law library, don't go study there unless you really have to. And if you HAVE to go, don't let it be during finals. And at least have the good grace to look frazzled and stressed. And for God's sake, be quiet. You don't look cool, and you're making everyone in that library HATE you.

Seriously.

As far as studying goes, I pretty much studied on my own, either at my apartment or in the library. There's SO much stress during finals, and different people study in different ways, so you have to pick who you study with carefully -- it's not always going to be your closest friend that you want at that study carrel with you. There was a little bit of tension between my friends during the whole exam period, to be honest. I just had to keep reminding myself that it would be okay, that everyone is just different during finals. And I spent a lot of time in my house with just Bingley and Netflix. I really don't like drama, but it seems like you can't escape it. Especially during finals.

Everything's cool now. I know you were SUPER worried.

All right, so in total I felt okay about pretty much every exam. Not great about any, not terrible about any. We'll see how it went when our grades come out. I know for sure that I didn't fail anything, so that's a little bit of comfort, right?

I'll try to post again (very soon) about my break and coming back to Dallas for the second semester. But seriously, comment and ask questions. I'll get back to you, I promise.