pmbr: day 3
property!
for some reason, this subject was my mother's milk as a 1l. i received my best grade, i studied the least, i barely read the casebook or prepared for class, i screwed around online during lectures. my success didn't make sense. but for some reason, at the end of the second semester, i sat down, took the test, and did fine (all of our 1l classes were a full year except for criminal law, which gave way to a second-semester version of writing and research that made the first semester seem like a voluntary tour of the law library... which, i guess, it basically was). i did better than fine.
by second semester, i had changed gears from my initial 'i'm going to attack law school and be an academic bad-ass' to, 'fuck grades, i want to change the world and i'm going to spend my time learning about the world and its problems.' i still recognized that i needed to survive academically, but that was about all i was trying to do at that point. stay off of academic probation and focus on my time and interests outside of the classroom.
property just clicked. i can't explain it, i don't remember much of it, but future interests had a logic i could follow, for some reason all of the elemental tests for different causes of action fell into neat little acronyms in my head. it just worked. it wasn't effortless, but it's the closest i've come to effortless since bullshitting my way through an intro to philosophy final in college.
today, it wasn't quite so effortless, i felt really quite lost. the 50 multiple choice questions that had taken me an hour and fifteen to an hour and a half for evidence and con law took me just under two hours. rather than feeling my curiosity piqued at lunchtime (as i had the last couple of days, wondering what i'd remembered without realizing i'd remembered it, what the answer really was to that one question... things like that), i felt intellectually drained, it was just a low energy day after that test.
the review wasn't as painful as i'd feared. i actually scored relatively well (54%) for a subject i hadn't really thought about for two years. it was a long review. more than substantive law, it was filled with tips for how to avoid really long or difficult questions that weren't worth the time they required to muddle through. similar to con law, the universe of property law is relatively narrow. the reviewer highlighted trends in the areas that examiners have been testing on for the last few years to give us a portrait of where we can expect to see an emphasis in the coming exam.
i left the review feeling better than i'd gone in, but still disoriented and drained. standing around on the train station platform, after leaving a short, grumpy message on the answering machine of a woman whose attention i'm desparately seeking, i decided maybe it was a good time to lighten up a little. so i cranked up the ipod and dug out a novel i'm working my way throught that makes me laugh.
as i write this, i think i'm back on course and my sanity is trickling back in, but the one thing that does have me concerned about today is how much that test threw me off for the rest of the day. in two months, i'm going to have to sit for six three-hour tests in a row, two a day for three days. if one-half of one of those tests can throw me off right now, i need to work on my endurance and my focus, more than a little. i guess that's what this 6-day a week studying plan is all about, but still, it's a long road ahead. wish me luck.
for some reason, this subject was my mother's milk as a 1l. i received my best grade, i studied the least, i barely read the casebook or prepared for class, i screwed around online during lectures. my success didn't make sense. but for some reason, at the end of the second semester, i sat down, took the test, and did fine (all of our 1l classes were a full year except for criminal law, which gave way to a second-semester version of writing and research that made the first semester seem like a voluntary tour of the law library... which, i guess, it basically was). i did better than fine.
by second semester, i had changed gears from my initial 'i'm going to attack law school and be an academic bad-ass' to, 'fuck grades, i want to change the world and i'm going to spend my time learning about the world and its problems.' i still recognized that i needed to survive academically, but that was about all i was trying to do at that point. stay off of academic probation and focus on my time and interests outside of the classroom.
property just clicked. i can't explain it, i don't remember much of it, but future interests had a logic i could follow, for some reason all of the elemental tests for different causes of action fell into neat little acronyms in my head. it just worked. it wasn't effortless, but it's the closest i've come to effortless since bullshitting my way through an intro to philosophy final in college.
today, it wasn't quite so effortless, i felt really quite lost. the 50 multiple choice questions that had taken me an hour and fifteen to an hour and a half for evidence and con law took me just under two hours. rather than feeling my curiosity piqued at lunchtime (as i had the last couple of days, wondering what i'd remembered without realizing i'd remembered it, what the answer really was to that one question... things like that), i felt intellectually drained, it was just a low energy day after that test.
the review wasn't as painful as i'd feared. i actually scored relatively well (54%) for a subject i hadn't really thought about for two years. it was a long review. more than substantive law, it was filled with tips for how to avoid really long or difficult questions that weren't worth the time they required to muddle through. similar to con law, the universe of property law is relatively narrow. the reviewer highlighted trends in the areas that examiners have been testing on for the last few years to give us a portrait of where we can expect to see an emphasis in the coming exam.
i left the review feeling better than i'd gone in, but still disoriented and drained. standing around on the train station platform, after leaving a short, grumpy message on the answering machine of a woman whose attention i'm desparately seeking, i decided maybe it was a good time to lighten up a little. so i cranked up the ipod and dug out a novel i'm working my way throught that makes me laugh.
as i write this, i think i'm back on course and my sanity is trickling back in, but the one thing that does have me concerned about today is how much that test threw me off for the rest of the day. in two months, i'm going to have to sit for six three-hour tests in a row, two a day for three days. if one-half of one of those tests can throw me off right now, i need to work on my endurance and my focus, more than a little. i guess that's what this 6-day a week studying plan is all about, but still, it's a long road ahead. wish me luck.
posted by tobin at 5/25/2006 09:13:00 PM
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