Exam Week: Fall 2004

Why haven't I been posting? It's finals week! In law school you don't usually get any graded homework and there's no midterm. You get one exam and one grade. Up until the last day, no one has any idea how they'll come out. I'm not sure if there's any real justification for this model other than the professors are lazy.

Tomorrow is my Constitutional Law exam and I'll be done, so it's almost all over but the cryin'. One student literally screamed after he walked out of the tax exam--a cry of frustration and anguish sort of like that one scene in Real Genius. Everyone heard him but no one was really alarmed. There were a few wry smiles from people who felt the same. The Federal Income Tax exam was a brain-numbing series of 12 questions (some had as many as three sub-parts) covering everything from like-kind property exchanges, bond premiums and original issue discount, and a few what-if policy questions. He told us to write a page or two per question, but the only way anyone could have done that is if he had the tax code memorized. I had only about 3-4 lines for some answers (less for the bond question) and I don't expect to do well.

Last weekend I wrote my take-home exam for Professional Responsibility. That one wasn't so bad. I was a bit annoyed that out of the $175 worth of books we were required to buy for the class, all we ended up really needing was about 20 pages we could have printed off the internet for free. I think if I was a law professor I'd be more conscientious about the reading list!