May 13, 2005

Self-realization. I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, when he said, "I drank what?" —Real Genius

Have you ever known something? I mean known it? Mastered it, backward and forward, like the back of your hand, inside and out, cliché after cliché? Well, that's how I felt about Contracts.

Contracts made sense. Not only that, I studied for this exam. Hard. I re-read all of the cases (no fooling'). I summarized them. I re-read all the relevant sections of the Restatement and the UCC. I outlined. I knew this shit cold. And it was an open book exam!

For class, I'd read the cases. I'd participated in class. I'd studied the material. If law school grades were based on some reasonable assessment of knowledge, say, a series of assignments during the semester comprised of quizzes, papers, a mid-term and a final, I would rock Contracts like Tenacious D on meth.

Instead, law school is based on the one final/one grade paradigm. This is a clever system designed to—well, I have no idea what it's designed to do. Apparently it's designed to determine: (1) who takes tests better; (2) who was having a better day; (3) who responds best to completely bogus artificial pressures that have no bearing on your real knowledge and/or mastery of the material but will nonetheless determine whether you clerk for the honorable Judge Whitey or have an ad for bankruptcy ((info))((tapes))℠ on the back of the local yellow pages.

If you sat down with me for an afternoon, engaged in a discussion of contracts, I think you would walk away from our conversation saying, "Wow, he really has a fundamental grasp of the material." If you read my exam answers from yesterday, you would say, "can this freak even tie his own shoes?"

I walked into the exam psyched. I was ready for it. In fact, I would almost say I was looking forward to it. This test was different.™ Our professor wanted us to cite cases! Our professor wanted us to answer real application questions! He even warned us: irrelevant doctrine would result in the subtraction of points, so no kitchen sink, mind-dump here. No! You had to know the law and apply it. Cool! The instructions even contained phrases that strike fear into the heart of most law students: some of the questions could be answered in a few sentences! (Unlike this essay.)

Now, remember that I said this was an open book test. So, I cracked the exam and read the first question. Here is a selection of my inner dialog:

"Whoa. This is a no-brainer. Wait. Is it? Maybe it's not as simple as I think. I must be missing something. Okay. Stick to the game plan. Just read the questions, no thinking, no writing. Read. Digest."

"Okay. Done. This is too easy. Wait a minute. I am so, totally and completely missing something. Wait. Stop. You're getting distracted. STICK TO THE PLAN. Okay, better. Outline answer number one."

"Hmmm. That seems too short, too simple. I have to be missing something... what am I forgetting?! Hey, okay, I know I wasn't going to use it... but the case book is right there. Just check a thing or two. Quickly. No, really, I'll be quick--the clock is ticking."

At that point, it's was all over. I'd fscked it all up; I opened the case book and frantically searched for "what I was missing" but I never did find it. What I did find was that I'd wasted a considerable amount of time second-guessing myself on what should have been a throw away question. So now, turning my attention to the next question, I was already behind. Needless to say, I didn't really finish the last question (there were three total). My last answer consisted of an outline, some paragraph sketches, and a little note indicating that I had run out of time.

I completely screwed myself on this one. I went from confident, feeling like I knew the material to a wishy-washy second-guesser in about five minutes flat. Why?

Because the pressure is really overwhelming. You've spent 3-4 months reading 1200 pages of cases for this class and your entire grade is going to be determined within this one, 3.5 hour window. It's about as far removed from nearly any real-life situation I've ever faced. I've never had a boss come to me and say, "you know that big project we've been evaluating for the last six months? I'd like a report for the board in three hours. Just write as much as you can remember about the project—oh, and your raise depends on how the board feels about this report."

Nor has my wife, an attorney, ever been told by a judge, "I want that motion on my desk in three hours." Hell, I can't tell you how many times she's gone to court and at the end of the day I'll ask how it went, only to hear, "the other guy asked for a continuance. I have to go back in two months."

So what exactly are we being tested on? This isn't a criticism of my Contracts professor—he was a good teacher. In fact, I think his exam (using real world questions and open book) was much closer to reality than some of the other exams I've taken, which were glorified, "Take the next three hours to write anything and everything you can about the subject" types of exams.

But we all have bad days and we don't all respond the same under the type of pressure you face in an exam situation. Does that mean that you're going to be a bad attorney? I highly doubt it. The demands of trial practice aren't the same as a transactional real estate practice. The exam is a highly artificial metric which doesn't really test much more than your ability to take law school exams. But this exam determines your grade and therefore your "worth" as a student, which is in turn used by employers to gage your "worth" as a potential employee. I can't be the only one who thinks this system is fundamentally flawed.

In the end, I'm just very, very depressed about the whole experience. Depressed because I feel as though my performance was below what I am capable of; depressed because I know that this one bad day is going to drag down my GPA and I'll spend the rest of school trying to catch up; depressed because now I'm completely drained and I have to turn around and study for another exam; and most of all, depressed because I let this bullshit get to me like this.

June 16, 2005

I have received the grades for my classes last semester. It's hard for me to express just how utterly and completely devastated I was after my Contracts exam. I was so angry with myself for not having stuck to my exam plan as close as I would have liked and for letting the pressure of the exam get to me.

I know that grades are not the end-all-be-all of existence. I'd been out of school long enough before returning to law school to know that my performance in the workplace, my skills, and my ideas are good and valuable to employers and I know that although grades might matter for that first job, they fade pretty quickly.

After the exam, I took a day off. I spent some time with my wife and I decided I would not post-mortem the exam in any way. So I left Contracts behind and moved on to Property.

I was very careful to follow the study plan I'd outlined and every day I reminded myself that it was just a test. Consequently, this time, I was able to stick to my exam plan and I walked out of the exam feeling somewhat confident. Somewhat. I was still plagued by that same doubt I think all law students—if not all students—face: that I somehow missed a major point, resulting in poor answers that were incomplete or just plain wrong.

I still think that the law school exam process is very flawed. There is a very definite bent to law school, almost military—a "break you down in order to rebuild you" sort of thing going on. Except law school doesn't rebuild you. They pay a lot of lip service to "thinking like a lawyer" which I suppose may be true if thinking like a lawyer means saying to hell with advice, mentorship and teaching and learning nearly everything on your own. That's law school in a nutshell—they break you down, alright, but the rebuilding is up to you. It's the most expensive self-study course you'll ever take.

That isn't to say I haven't had a good experience. On the whole, I have. That alone should be evidence of the insanity that is law school. I'm sure you're asking yourself right now, "Wait, he was just going on and on about how exams nearly killed him and now he's saying it's a good experience?! Waaa?" But it's true. This is the first time in my life I've actually had to work in school. There is something satisfying about that, in a perverse way.

This semester I had two very good professors—one of whom is among the best professors I have ever had. But even in his class, performance evaluation still came down to that one day, those 3.5 hours spent sitting in front of a computer, trying to condense a semester's worth of knowledge into a few pages cogent enough to demonstrate that you may have actually learned something.

I still think it's a crap way to evaluate students.

So what did all this self-imposed drama teach me? I'm not sure. Mostly it confirmed that I'm my own worst enemy and the real danger lies in taking myself too seriously. But now I have some more experience under my belt and I know just how much difference remaining calm and keeping perspective can make. I only hope I can retain that insight as I continue to "rebuild" myself and start "thinking like a lawyer".

Oh, if you were wondering, I rocked both exams.
Rock over London, rock out Chicago!