Finals Season
Our three back-to-back weekends of taiko performances wrapped up with Saturday’s pushing-the-hot-end-of-bearable show at the Dragonboat Festival. The organizers moved the festival from Buffalo Bayou to Sugar Land at the last minute due to flooding on the Bayou, with the happy result that instead of pushing our drums up and down a steep hill, we only had to drag them across a dozen yards of grass. I wouldn’t mind a bit if the festival folks made this change permanent.
And it’s just in time that our spring season ends, because I have four finals coming up in the next two weeks, starting on Wednesday. They happen to come in order of increasing difficulty, at least as I see them now. Writing, the easiest final of all (because writing the brief was hard enough), was two weeks ago. I’ll go through my thoughts on the rest, not because you care, but because later I’d like to know how I felt about these exams before I saw them.
Criminal Law. This one should be relatively straightforward. We covered a manageable amount of material, and there are common themes (the levels of mens rea, mostly) running through everything. The exam will be closed-book, except that we’ll get a clean copy of the Texas Penal Code. Almost everything is in the TPC; it’s just a matter of knowing where to find it, being comfortable with the language, and applying it to the facts.
Constitutional Law. In ConLaw we covered much more material. The upside is that it’s clear which bits the prof thinks are most important. We’ll have four essay questions, probably on the commerce clause, equal protection and scrutiny levels, substantive due process, and maybe federalism or separation of powers. Judging by the sample exams he’s released, his questions are LONG and deep. This one is scheduled for the full four hours, and it’ll be a hand-cramper. It’s open-everything, so I need to get my piles of notes* organized to give me plenty of time to type type type.
Property. Ugh. This class is gross. There’s so much material, the vast majority of which is common law, which means it’s based on historical precedent and exceptions to exceptions more than on logic. The prof will let us use anything except commercial study guides and outlines; I wish she’d told us this earlier than two weeks ago, maybe before I spent thirty bucks on mine. I don’t want to think about this exam any more than I have to.
Administrative Law. I don’t understand Admin Law. Unfortunately, I think at least a few people in my class do—curve blown. Open-everything, but I’m still going to have to study a bunch to have a hope of doing well on this one. The material is so dry and colorless that it all runs together. I like rules upon rules upon rules, but it seems I’ve reached my limit with the APA.
Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Friday. At least there’s enough space between them that I only have to study for one exam at a time. I’m looking forward to next Friday evening, that’s for sure.
———
* I don’t outline. Shocking, I know. I vaguely feel that I should, but it takes sooooo much time, and I’ve done okay so far without outlining, so I’m holding out as long as I can.
Tags: exams, law school, taiko
