I saw a sign that said that grades for last semester will be out tomorrow. Here's why I think I might not have done well, followed by a post on why it doesn't really mean anything if I didn't do well.
In general, I still don't think I've quite mastered the Law School Exam, although I think I'm slowly figuring it out. There have been posts here where I've been able to rip apart a fact pattern to fuel an analysis in a way that law school exams require. It's a skill I didn't really have before starting law school but that I'm clearly developing. Unfortunately I still don't always find myself able to demonstrate it sufficiently in the heat of the exam.
During the exam I feel pulled between two sources of tension, which I don't feel I can satisfy simultaneously: the need to catch all the issues, and the need to write a good analysis. We're theoretically expected to do both, but I always find myself so rushed to cover all the material that the analysis ends up somewhat neglected.
Professors also grade differently, which exacerbates the problem, because what works for some exams won't necessarily for another. I've had professors return exams where the goal apparently had been to accumulate checkmarks. So on these exams you wouldn't have wanted to risk leaving an issue on the table, it seems, in the quest to make certain points more meaningful. Yet other professors seem to emphasize the analysis, and will withhold checkmarks if the points are not made in the same specific language the professor prefers.
My evidence exam has me the most worried. I really liked the class. The casebook was great, the material was interesting, and the professor was extremely engaging. There wasn't really anything on the exam that didn't ring a bell, but I felt like I wrote the exam a little haphazardly, trying to throw everything in. And I may not have quite gotten the feel of how to phrase things the way he liked. I missed a bunch of classes, though not by choice. Well, maybe the election day trip was optional, and if missing that trip causes my grade to suffer I'm prepared to accept the consequence - I felt it was that important for me to help protect the election. But I also missed some classes in the middle, traveling to do my job search. I hated missing the classes, but it's something 2Ls often have to contend with. I did get notes and things and borrowed videotapes of most of the classes I missed, but I still have this nagging suspicion that I should have done more, and sooner. As if that was at all possible…
My international law process class also concerns me because I had a difficult time staying engaged during the class lectures. I liked the professor and the materials were intriguing, but I feel like I learned the entire class's material during the review I did at the end of it. Perhaps that was sufficient, but that's not the way I feel comfortable learning.
Corporations will be a bit of a crap shoot. I liked the class and the professor, but there were no practice exams because he'd never given one before on the subject. And I think he may have underestimated the amount of time his exam required to complete. He had said beforehand that there should be plenty of time to do a good analysis AND cover all the issues, but I found myself pressed for time. I think many other people were as well. There was so much material to cover, and the way the exam was set up you couldn't really skip any of it without consciously leaving points on the table. It was also really hard to calculate how much time to devote to each part in order to pace yourself, because the total number of minutes available for the exam and the exam question point values didn't easily correlate, at least not without working out some complicated algebra.
My other two classes, the seminars, stand better chances of coming out well. Not only are they not on curves (meaning that while I may have had a perfectly decent evidence exam, if all my classmates had slightly more decent exams I will still get a crappy grade) but I produced papers, not exams. I much prefer doing papers than exams. They seem like a much more constructive effort, for one thing. Even if I ace my Evidence exam, I'll never be able to publish it or anything. It offers nothing new to the discovery and discussion of the law; it's simply regurgitation. Whereas for my Antitrust and IP class, I wrote a paper that could maybe be posted or published elsewhere, or at least built upon - provided, of course, that the professor thought it was as good as I did… But even if he doesn't like it, I think it was a more valuable exercise applying the material I learned.
I'm a bit more concerned about the other course, Copyright and Rhetoric, because I petered out a bit at the end. I wasn't really satisfied with how the final edit of my paper came out, but in the end the grade probably won't be contingent on it specifically. The important thing from that class were its larger lessons. I know I internalized most of them, and I think my professor does too.
Even with all this in mind, I think there are a couple of reasons why I feel so squeamish about my upcoming grades. For one, I'm still shell-shocked from my first year. I used to test well, reliably. I aced everything through elementary and middle school; high school and college worked out pretty well too. My first year made me worry that I'd completely lost my game, like I'd completely forgotten how to take a test successfully. And nothing has happened subsequently to rebuild my confidence on that point.
The other reason I'm concerned is that I feel like there was more I could have done to have succeeded in the classes. This is technically true: there was more reading, more studying, more outlining, more reviewing… There was an infinite vessel of diligence I could have endeavored to fill. But given the available time, energy, and various other obligations, I did everything that I could. I didn't blow off my classes, I didn't blow off my reading. And I'm not worried that I'm going to fail. It's just that as a measure of how much I've really absorbed as a law student, I fear the grades will come up short.
Read Part II
Edit 1/22: Some exam tips.