Studying in Comfort

The crazy schedule of work plus summer school (part time students, I have a renewed respect for you) has made it hard to post regularly, but I must take a moment to report that the school has put some sweet new comfy chairs in the library lobby. They're dynamite!

School is In Session

Summer classes start tomorrow. I'm only taking two classes, but the accelerated pace of the summer session will take some getting used to. My total reading assignment for the first day of class? 123 pages. Add the fact that I'm now holding down a job, and it's going to be a long ten weeks.

Back In the Real World

There's nothing like a full-time job to make one appreciate the academic life. I couldn't find work in the legal field, so I'm back at the job I walked away from nine months ago when I went to school. At least I had somewhere to go. Tuition ain't cheap!

Two Feet of Books

Way back in August, I posted a photo of the books I had bought for the fall semester. Here they are again, with the addition of my Criminal Law book and two semesters of notes, handouts and papers. Does anyone need to buy some law books?

Out With a Bang

The Civil Procedure exam was the longest of the bunch. It also packed another doozy of an essay question, with the true issue buried in a thicket of red herrings. I think I cracked this one. In fact, I felt better about my answers on this exam than on any other, not least because there were no multiple-choice questions to fill me with self-doubt. I won't see any grades for a solid month. Until then, I'll try not to think about it.

Contracts Exam is In the Books

On the Contracts exam, I encountered a first for me: a page-long essay question that left me with no idea what the professor was asking for. After a convoluted set of facts, the question was, "Can Mr. Closson enforce the agreement?" Was it a question about contract formation? Breach of contract? Conditional duties? Equity? I had no idea. I wrote a 350-word response anyway. I only hope I covered the right stuff.

Three Down, Two to Go

The Legal Research exam was this morning. I suppose I did all right. Legal Research is just a one-credit-hour course and the exam was 100% multiple choice, so few students took it seriously. And let me emphasize that this was not the sort of multiple choice horror show that I hate and fear on other law school exams. This was the multiple choice that you're used to, where many answers can be inferred just from a careful reading of the language of the question. A 'B' would be just fine, and I'll be surprised if I do worse than that.

The Criminal Law exam, two days ago, went as well as could be expected. I'm sure I made some mistakes, but none of the questions took me by complete surprise. I couldn't begin to speculate about my grade.

Wrung Out

I was expecting a brutal intellectual beat-down, and the Property exam did not disappoint. I felt like I studied the right things, but the test demanded a pretty subtle understanding of the law. As happened last semester, I was undone by page after page of ambiguously worded multiple choice questions. I did a lot of guessing. Then my essay responses were accurate as far as they went, but they were so short that I was left thinking that I must be leaving out some important information. I won't be surprised by anything from an A to an F. Criminal Law is next.

Exam Eve

In twenty-four hours I'll be finished with my Property exam. The outline I came up with to prepare is almost twice as long as the one I wrote in the fall. Does that mean that I learned twice as much? I think rather that I didn't learn this semester's material very well, so I wrote more down. I'll find out for sure tomorrow.