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um...does this happen in law school often?

civ pro was my first exam. my professor said jurisdiction should be constitution and not civ pro and saved pj, smj, and erie for last. we were a lil behind so we volunteered for an extra class and finished smj. on the last day of class we went over swift, erie, york, byrd, hanna in 1 hour...

we spent 3 months on rules, 1.5 weeks on personal jurisdiction, a day on smj and a day on erie.

all the fucking 2Ls said they didn't do erie last year so they didn't have it on the exam.

1 out of the 3 questions, equally weighted was erie. oh well.

I've found that it happens a lot on exams. Professors are determined to fuck people who checked out before the last couple classes. Last year, half of our exam in CrimPro was on an esoteric theoretical article we have to read for the last day. I suppose it did incorporate CrimPro as a whole, at least in his mind, but if you weren't there or weren't paying attention or didn't read, you were screwed.

So I guess this is a roundabout way of saying ... get used to it.

Yes.

My Con Law professor taught almost nothing but policy and theory throughout the entire semester. The final exam was all law.

some solace: it's curved, most likely a lot of other people in your class feel the same way right now.

nah that's the absolute worst part.

there's a 3-4 man gunner group that i wasn't a part of who were real chummy w/ the prof.

overall, i'm just an uber idiot because in the 4 practice exams that he gave us (from 1999 - from a diff professor), there was some erie question.

apparently one of them was a carbon copy of the one on the final exam. i think the gunner group nailed it. and that's also the saddest part - if i just spent a day or two on erie as a safety precaution, i could have mortal locked the A.

part of me hates myself because i could have just spent like...4 hours studying erie instead of literally writing up hypos on things i thought he was going to test about. but part of me also thinks it is patently unfair to test on something that you taught on the last day of class and claimed you didn't give a shit about

i guess it is a really tough lesson to learn - i loved the class, the material, did the most work in that class, even did some outside research (alito's dissent; brennan's patterns of voting) - and in the end it comes down to some erie bull shit.

F law school. ok end rant, onto the next exams.

edit - nah overall i'm just angry at myself. i done fucked up.

Seriously, this is going to happen a lot. You're always going to have something you don't have a great grasp on, and you are going to bet you chips that it won't show up, or that it'll be minimized. It happens all the time. You'll win some and you'll lose some.

That really sucks man and I'm sorry it happened to you, but hopefully you can learn from it going forward. Anything a prof teaches is fair game on the exam, even if they didn't spend much time on it. And especially if there were Erie questions on practice exams, you should have been ready for them. Did you do all of the practice exams available under timed conditions? If not, start doing that

You'll even find as time goes on, at least in some classes, that you will want to toss in cases from the notes to help you resolve or clarify issues. I think a lot of people think that if it's not mentioned in class, then don't sweat it, but you can pick up some points by using some of those cases that fall between the lecture cracks to clarify doctrines or draw parallels to the fact patterns.

MBZags wrote:Yes.

My Con Law professor taught almost nothing but policy and theory throughout the entire semester. The final exam was all law.

My LegReg prof. spent the entire semester harping on careful reading, nitpicking verbal ambiguities, and particularities and nuances of the interpretation process. Half of the exam credit was based on a pure policy question, with a statute only thrown in to frame the question.

That wasn't a fun pill to swallow.

j

professors suck, and their tests just try to trick you. my professor told our whole class something would NOT be on the test specifically, so no one studied it... then he put it on the test.

What sucks is you try to be diligent and look at old tests to prepare. And it's like they write a test purposely to screw the people who actually did what they are trained to do to prepare for an exam.

I am convinced law school is just one long hazing exercise. With huge consequences, unfortunately.

lol nah but i really liked this dude. i just can't believe how dirty that exam was. i think a sophomore in college could have done better than me if he just read about personal jurisdiction, erie, and was handed a rule book. i logged so many hours into this class, it is just sickening.

This thread has me scared about Erie. We spent 1 day on it. We only read Erie and Hanna. No idea wtf is going on there except a few basic, big points. Wouldn't know how to analyze. I assume it wouldn't be on there. Waaahh

I wouldn't stress TOO much over it, this is one of those situations where the curve is actually your friend.

You perhaps got a B on one of your first finals. You have more to come, and make-up for it. And, yes, there is also second semester.

Don't forget it is 1L grades that count for OCI - ALL of them taken together, and not just this one from civpro.

Fuhgedabowdit and move-on to the next one.

my professor had a review session was like "you'll be responsible for all the material on the syllabus"

we are wayyyy behind, fuggin ridiculous but that is life

i'm not stressin anymore - felt like this was more of a warning to others. even if yo professor seems to stress and emphasize one thing, he might base 1/3 of the exam (and your grade) on another

this was like when i found out my ug philosophy professor who i worshiped had a side job as a "life coach" for $100+ an hour. how can you teach marx and do that

bartleby wrote:i'm not stressin anymore - felt like this was more of a warning to others. even if yo professor seems to stress and emphasize one thing, he might base 1/3 of the exam (and your grade) on another

this was like when i found out my ug philosophy professor who i worshiped had a side job as a "life coach" for $100+ an hour. how can you teach marx and do that

Is that joke? Commies are the biggest hypocrites in the world.

no, this is actually true. he didn't only teach marx. but a "life counselor"? c'mon man. i felt betrayed (semi-joking here)

edit - it's like you can't walk around and sulk and scowl and be intimidating to students - basically the emo super smart young professor we're talking about here...and be a life coach. f that j olsteen shit

I feel your pain buddy. I'm actually going through a similar situation with my evidence exam (although only in the sense that I want to kill myself, not because there was stuff on the final that we didn't cover)

But as a 1L my first Civ Pro test was ridiculous. I don't know if your school uses TWEN, but he posted "current event" articles dealing with civil procedure and never said a word that we were responsible for knowing them. Everyone assumed they were just for those who were interested. Turns out there were tons of questions that were from those articles he posted. He also would give the most ridiculous fact patterns, some of which were over a page long and only one question to go along with it. It was the most frustrating thing walking out of that test. I feel like he was sitting at his computer while he was typing just laughing his ass off at that garbage he was typing up for our exam. The guy is basically God here though so he can do whatever the heck he wants and no one will bat an eye. And I have him for Con Law next week. Should be a blasty blast.

I also feel abysmal about my crim exam. I feel, in retrospect, that I misapplied the law/statutes (because I misread two) to every issue I spotted making them all incorrect. At this point, I'm hoping for a C and am trying to move past it so I don't ruin all of my other finals. It would be nice to be employable at some point in my future.