International Criminal Law Exam

I just wrapped up my International Criminal Law exam, and it was God-awful. I didn't take this class seriously all semester, and I paid dearly for it. It wasn't that the questions were terribly hard. I just didn't know the material very well, so my answers were short and shallow.
I was one of the few students who regularly volunteered in this class, so I'll just have to hope the professor gives me a bump for class participation. A word about that: grading of exams is anonymous--the professor will just get a stack of exams with random numbers on them. However, when professors turn in their grades they can, if they choose, include a list of students whose grades are to be raised or lowered for attendance and class participation.

One Exam Left

This time tomorrow, it will all be over. It is awfully hard to work myself up to study for this last exam. International Criminal Law was my least favorite class this semester, and it was only two credit-hours. It's also an open-book exam, making it tempting to think that I can go in underprepared and look stuff up on the spot (never a good strategy).

So far, I've gone through my notes and typed up three pages of bullet points covering the highlights of the course. It's well short of the fourteen-page outline I brought into my Sales exam, but it's better than nothing.

Planning for Fall

I finally have 100% confirmation that I have an externship waiting for me in the fall. I'll be clerking at the Arkansas Supreme Court. If you don't know what that entails, it's like this: when a case comes to an appeals court, it comes with a boatload of paper. There's the record of the trial proceedings, and then there are briefs (that are anything but brief) from attorneys on both sides. Most appellate judges have a couple of law clerks who read all that stuff, double-check any cases or statutes the attorneys cite to, and make a recommendation to the judge. Law clerks are the oompa-loompas in America's law factories.
Research and writing projects have been my favorite part of law school, so I could not write a better job description for myself. This is work I would do for free--which I will be, because it doesn't pay.

I also took my Business Associations final today. I wrote a longish post about it, but I'm going to wait a few days to put it online because some of my classmates haven't taken the test yet.

Sales Exam

Today it was Sales Transactions. This was an open book exam. I've only experienced a couple of these, and I don't care for them. With all my books and notes in front of me, it's easy to get fastidious and waste time looking up niggling details when I should be painting in broad strokes and getting more material onto the page. I'm a pretty good memorizer, so closed book exams play more to my strengths.

I walked out of the Sales exam feeling pretty much the same way I felt after the Advanced Civ Pro exam: all the questions made sense to me, and I wrote a lot, but that doesn't necessarily mean my answers were good.

Even Cheap Law Schools Cost Plenty

To remain a Law Review member in good standing, I have to spend one or two semesters working for the editorial board. It doesn't pay, but I do get course credit.

So today I paid the bill for my summer classes, and they charged me for my Law Review credit! That is, it's costing me just as much to work for a student-run organization as it does to receive classroom instruction. Man, that is low.

One Exam Down

Advanced Civil Procedure was a pretty good way to start this semester's exams. That was the class with only four students in it, so we all studied hard all semester and had no reason to fear the final. Certainly the professor felt no need to pull his punches. The exam covered about two thirds of the course in one sprawling essay question (my response was just over 1100 words) and mopped up the rest of the course material in three shorter essays. I don't know if I gave the professor what he wanted, but I will say this: I had something to say about every question. I didn't write any wild guesses or filler. That's about the best I can hope for.
I should be preparing for my next exam, but I'm wiped out. I'll just have to put in an extra long day tomorrow.

Well-Fueled Study Sessions

I don't know if the student government is burning off its unused budget for the year or what, but the student lounge has been positively bathed in free food this weekend. If the idea was to encourage students to study on campus, it's working on me. I rarely come to school on Saturdays, but here I am.