So... the Civ Pro exam
That excellent novel, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, describes the effects of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster as "likened to having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick."
Take away the lemon, and you'd have about the net effect of that twenty-four hour Civ Pro takehome. I never thought anything would keep me from blogging for almost two days, but that exam did it.
I spent about two hours regretting how poorly prepared I was. Then I spent the next hour getting an outline together, and realizing that a whole other week of studying wouldn't have done me any good: I'd never have felt prepared for this thing. I'm not saying the exam wasn't fair, or suitable to the course, or whatever: it was just very, very hard.
All in all, I got about four hours of sleep in that twenty four hours. By the time I was done, I was reasonably happy that I had something I could hand in. It was the requisite number of words, answered all the questions, and more or less made semi-plausible arguments for whatever it was I'd wanted to assert. I have no idea if it was actually correct, but it was words on paper. That was about the height of my ambitions by the time I finished.
The worst exam I ever sat was my unseen translation final back when I was studying Japanese, in which I was met with a classical Japanese character I couldn't have hoped to meet, and translated it as 'rose.' When I got home, I figured out that this very active rose whose story I'd been translating was actually a hawk. The part of the character that meant 'bird' should have been a dead giveaway, but oddly wasn't. This exam wasn't that bad, but it runs a close second.
Since 4PM on Friday, I've spent the statistical majority of my time in bed recovering. And soon I'm off home for the holidays, to leave all thoughts of law school behind me. Oh, except for the following:
(a) If given the choice, I'm never taking an course with a takehome again.
(b) If there's any second-years reading this who have good ideas on breaktime reading for Con Law, I'd appreciate it. My teacher apparently assigns hideous amounts of reading each night, so I figure reading a hornbook over the break would hurt me.
Comments
Posted by: Dave | December 22, 2003 1:47 PM
Posted by: David | December 22, 2003 3:59 PM
Posted by: Katherine | December 22, 2003 9:42 PM
Posted by: Avi Frisch | December 22, 2003 11:56 PM
Posted by: Kara | December 24, 2003 9:08 AM