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I'm a 2L at a T-20 and I am really nervous about one of my exams. I did provide answers to each of the 5 Q on the exam, but I felt like they were all pretty half ass. The exam was really tough. How bad would someone have to do in order to fail a class as a 2l at a T-20? I looked at the past grade distributions and he has only given 1 F. Could someone in my situation, a student who provided answers for each question (even though they were half assed and partly shots in the dark) and went to every class, fail?

If the professor has only given one F, I think you're going to need to do a lot more than give half ass answers. Most people slack off a bit more in 2L, and I think messy, half-ass nonsense answers are more the stuff of Bs than Cs or even Fs. My guess it that an F would be a clear failure to use virtually ANYTHING learned in the course. E.g. a crimpro answer that concentrates on the seeming "fairness" of the search without any reference to any cases or BLL on the topic. Basically people rolling into the exam day without any prep or previous attendance whatsoever.

MinEMorris wrote:If the professor has only given one F, I think you're going to need to do a lot more than give half ass answers. Most people slack off a bit more in 2L, and I think messy, half-ass nonsense answers are more the stuff of Bs than Cs or even Fs. My guess it that an F would be a clear failure to use virtually ANYTHING learned in the course. E.g. a crimpro answer that concentrates on the seeming "fairness" of the search without any reference to any cases or BLL on the topic. Basically people rolling into the exam day without any prep or previous attendance whatsoever.

Thank you, I think this will make me feel better. What I found interesting was there was atleast 7 people at the exam who I had never seen in class before. Yeah I didn't mention we are on a B+ curve so, that should help. Right?

It'd about as hard to fail as it is to get an A. Welcome to the land of B's.

Which school?

manofjustice wrote:Which school?

T-16, wanna keep it anonymous.

MinEMorris wrote:If the professor has only given one F, I think you're going to need to do a lot more than give half ass answers. Most people slack off a bit more in 2L, and I think messy, half-ass nonsense answers are more the stuff of Bs than Cs or even Fs. My guess it that an F would be a clear failure to use virtually ANYTHING learned in the course. E.g. a crimpro answer that concentrates on the seeming "fairness" of the search without any reference to any cases or BLL on the topic. Basically people rolling into the exam day without any prep or previous attendance whatsoever.

I think in general TITCR.

A lot of times people (myself included) fail to answer entire sections on an exam and still get above median. If you answered all the questions and had a reasonable grasp of the material, there is virtually no way that you could have failed the exam. Hell, you may even wind up with a decent grade.

FWIW, I got a C in a class where I misunderstood the question calls for three essay questions, and put essentially "correct" answers as the answers to the wrong questions (so I basically got almost no points for each question). If I did not fail doing that, you definitely won't fail. But getting a C is basically a fail with a "nice try" added to it anyway.

adonai wrote:FWIW, I got a C in a class where I misunderstood the question calls for three essay questions, and put essentially "correct" answers as the answers to the wrong questions (so I basically got almost no points for each question). If I did not fail doing that, you definitely won't fail. But getting a C is basically a fail with a "nice try" added to it anyway.

3 out of how many questions?
I did the same on a curved class this semester, 15 questions overall, three misread ones. Partially nerves, partially was tired, + the professors use of quadruple negatives. Just say the court is following X jurisdiction, do not say the court is unwilling to depart from X jurisdiction.

Pokemon wrote:

adonai wrote:FWIW, I got a C in a class where I misunderstood the question calls for three essay questions, and put essentially "correct" answers as the answers to the wrong questions (so I basically got almost no points for each question). If I did not fail doing that, you definitely won't fail. But getting a C is basically a fail with a "nice try" added to it anyway.

3 out of how many questions?
I did the same on a curved class this semester, 15 questions overall, three misread ones. Partially nerves, partially was tired, + the professors use of quadruple negatives. Just say the court is following X jurisdiction, do not say the court is unwilling to depart from X jurisdiction.

3 out of 3. Prof was not good with the english language, so I had trouble understanding what they were asking for in the question call. This prof has a history of this supposedly. Apparently everyone else got it so I just really messed up and couldn't overcome this extra hurdle. So essentially, although I spotted all the right issues in the overall broad sense, my analysis was pretty skewed with respect to the real issues each question call was looking for (if that makes any sense). I'm pretty sure the prof. knew what was up and accordingly gave me a discretionary C for it instead of failing me. Your prof seems to have just been trying to be tricky. My prof just had horrible grammar and had a hard time making themselves clear. Sorry to hear about that though. You should have better luck than me since you had 15 questions.

Just got my grade back, B+


Thank you for the responses. Curves can really be beautiful things, sometimes.

Congrats OP! I don't know who originally wrote it, but there's a quote about the curve on TLS that I like: "The curve is a 1L's bane and a 2L's savior" - or something like that.