Page 1 of 3

How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 5:30 am
by Extension_Cord
I my finals were all 3 days apart. I studied about 40 hours (10 hours a day for 4 days) for the first one and maybe 24+ hours for each aditional (12+ hours a day for 2 days).

This is during reading period only. I had this discussion with my sectionmates and they told me they did either the same as me or a bit more.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 5:57 am
by Tanicius
My study habits have been an absolute, unadulterated joke. I worked really hard in a group for outlines in CivPro and Crim, but I've been outrageously lax ever since completing the outlines, reading them over for what probably amounts to less than 3 hours a day. I didn't study for even an hour before my take-home open-book Torts final, but it was fine because you could just use your notes, and it had a ~4000 word limit for an 8-hour window, giving me plenty of time to look stuff up at leisure. Did CivPro after a more moderate amount of studying, and now all that's left is Crim, and I'm lazy as fuck. Played video games for most of today, final's on Wednesday. :?

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:03 am
by Extension_Cord
Tanicius wrote:My study habits have been an absolute, unadulterated joke. I worked really hard in a group for outlines in CivPro and Crim, but I've been outrageously lax ever since completing the outlines, reading them over for what probably amounts to less than 3 hours a day. I didn't study for even an hour before my take-home open-book Torts final, but it was fine because you could just use your notes, and it had a ~4000 word limit for an 8-hour window, giving me plenty of time to look stuff up at leisure. Did CivPro after a more moderate amount of studying, and now all that's left is Crim, and I'm lazy as fuck. Played video games for most of today, final's on Wednesday. :?
How you do on your crim final may make or break a great job, get studying.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:10 am
by shoeshine
Extension_Cord wrote:
Tanicius wrote:My study habits have been an absolute, unadulterated joke. I worked really hard in a group for outlines in CivPro and Crim, but I've been outrageously lax ever since completing the outlines, reading them over for what probably amounts to less than 3 hours a day. I didn't study for even an hour before my take-home open-book Torts final, but it was fine because you could just use your notes, and it had a ~4000 word limit for an 8-hour window, giving me plenty of time to look stuff up at leisure. Did CivPro after a more moderate amount of studying, and now all that's left is Crim, and I'm lazy as fuck. Played video games for most of today, final's on Wednesday. :?
How you do on your crim final may make or break a great job, get studying.
Why would an employer care about crim more than other classes? Unless he wants to be a public defender I think crim is the same as the rest.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:15 am
by Extension_Cord
shoeshine wrote:
Extension_Cord wrote:
Tanicius wrote:My study habits have been an absolute, unadulterated joke. I worked really hard in a group for outlines in CivPro and Crim, but I've been outrageously lax ever since completing the outlines, reading them over for what probably amounts to less than 3 hours a day. I didn't study for even an hour before my take-home open-book Torts final, but it was fine because you could just use your notes, and it had a ~4000 word limit for an 8-hour window, giving me plenty of time to look stuff up at leisure. Did CivPro after a more moderate amount of studying, and now all that's left is Crim, and I'm lazy as fuck. Played video games for most of today, final's on Wednesday. :?
How you do on your crim final may make or break a great job, get studying.
Why would an employer care about crim more than other classes? Unless he wants to be a public defender I think crim is the same as the rest.
Just trying to motivate him to study, I think he could use a push.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 11:36 am
by jess
.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 11:54 am
by cinephile
I feel like I haven't studied enough. We've had a 4 day reading period and I've only studied about 4 hours each day for Civ Pro. I did a couple hours of Civ Pro a night for the past week, but it doesn't feel like enough. But I can't bring myself to be one of those people studies 12 hours a day. I'd burn out. I'm already close to burnt out. I can't wait for grades to be back and I haven't even taken an exam yet.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 12:03 pm
by itsirtou
tbh I use the creation of my outline as most of my studying, so once I'm done with it, I don't study really hard. I take some practice tests, review the material and talk it over with friends, but once the outlines are done so are the majority of my study hours.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 2:37 pm
by shepdawg
I study until I feel like studying is a waste of time. That said, I am finished outlining and reading for classes 30 days prior to my first exam. I spend 6 days studying for each exam, 10 hours each day. This is my 2L schedule. 1L was 7 days and about 10-12 hrs/day for each class.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 2:38 pm
by Grizz
shepdawg wrote:I study until I feel like studying is a waste of time. That said, I am finished outlining and reading for classes 30 days prior to my first exam. I spend 6 days studying for each exam, 10 hours each day. This is my 2L schedule. 1L was 7 days and about 10-12 hrs/day for each class.
The mythical 2L gunner

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 2:51 pm
by NotMyRealName09
Although I studied until the studying was done, in the long run I found that for a 4 credit class, I would need about 4 full days (10-12 hour days) to outline, and if I could have an extra day to review and run practice questions, then 5 days total for a four credit class. Mind you, I didn't outline until the very end, so if your outlines are done or at least already started, you could spend less time just before finals.

EDIT: And an exam day did not count. If I took an exam, I didn't bother studying for the next exam that same day. Letting your brain decompress is important, and once done with an exam, have a drink and a nap, you've earned it.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 2:52 pm
by NotMyRealName09
itsirtou wrote:tbh I use the creation of my outline as most of my studying, so once I'm done with it, I don't study really hard. I take some practice tests, review the material and talk it over with friends, but once the outlines are done so are the majority of my study hours.
This in addition to what I just said above.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:39 pm
by meg5096
shepdawg wrote:I study until I feel like studying is a waste of time. That said, I am finished outlining and reading for classes 30 days prior to my first exam. I spend 6 days studying for each exam, 10 hours each day. This is my 2L schedule. 1L was 7 days and about 10-12 hrs/day for each class.
what is this i don't even

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:50 pm
by 005618502
NotMyRealName09 wrote:Although I studied until the studying was done, in the long run I found that for a 4 credit class, I would need about 4 full days (10-12 hour days) to outline, and if I could have an extra day to review and run practice questions, then 5 days total for a four credit class. Mind you, I didn't outline until the very end, so if your outlines are done or at least already started, you could spend less time just before finals.

EDIT: And an exam day did not count. If I took an exam, I didn't bother studying for the next exam that same day. Letting your brain decompress is important, and once done with an exam, have a drink and a nap, you've earned it.
You dont have back to back finals (obvious 0L here) just curious. In UG I had 3 finals one day followed by 2 the next. That was hell

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:51 pm
by Tanicius
Extension_Cord wrote:
shoeshine wrote:
Extension_Cord wrote:
Tanicius wrote:My study habits have been an absolute, unadulterated joke. I worked really hard in a group for outlines in CivPro and Crim, but I've been outrageously lax ever since completing the outlines, reading them over for what probably amounts to less than 3 hours a day. I didn't study for even an hour before my take-home open-book Torts final, but it was fine because you could just use your notes, and it had a ~4000 word limit for an 8-hour window, giving me plenty of time to look stuff up at leisure. Did CivPro after a more moderate amount of studying, and now all that's left is Crim, and I'm lazy as fuck. Played video games for most of today, final's on Wednesday. :?
How you do on your crim final may make or break a great job, get studying.
Why would an employer care about crim more than other classes? Unless he wants to be a public defender I think crim is the same as the rest.
Just trying to motivate him to study, I think he could use a push.

It's a'ight dude. I didn't mean to sound down or anything. I'm not. I'm more surprised that I approached law school finals basically the exact same way I approached undergrad. So far I felt like I've been spotting the same amount of issues as everyone else and stuff, so I'll just wait and see how it pans out when grades come back in January.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:53 pm
by Tanicius
AssumptionRequired wrote:
NotMyRealName09 wrote:Although I studied until the studying was done, in the long run I found that for a 4 credit class, I would need about 4 full days (10-12 hour days) to outline, and if I could have an extra day to review and run practice questions, then 5 days total for a four credit class. Mind you, I didn't outline until the very end, so if your outlines are done or at least already started, you could spend less time just before finals.

EDIT: And an exam day did not count. If I took an exam, I didn't bother studying for the next exam that same day. Letting your brain decompress is important, and once done with an exam, have a drink and a nap, you've earned it.
You dont have back to back finals (obvious 0L here) just curious. In UG I had 3 finals one day followed by 2 the next. That was hell
Yeah man. I feel like some of my undergrad finals weeks were way fucking worse. I would much rather study for three law school tests than write five papers in two weeks. The material on my exams so far hasn't been very deep stuff - all of it is readily knowable if you are allowed to use an outline. It gets understandably harder if you don't have an outline during the test, but it seriously doesn't take that long to memorize most of the stuff on a 20-page outline before the test, at least for a 1L doctrinal course like CivPro or Crim. Just read shit over for a few hours while watching TV each day for a week leading up to the test, and you should be able to spot most of the issues and get the answers half-right.

I fully admit it's possible I'll get straight P's. I think it's also possible I'll get more decent grades. Either way, the difficulty in law school is the process of taking an exam. I was never stressed out during my exams, never felt pressed for time, never had a moment where I was like, "Fuck I don't know this guess I'll just bullshit an answer." If I don't do that well on my exams because my classmates are all just as smart as I am and knew how to spot issues more efficiently and write out their answers more succinctly, well fine then. I'm still glad as hell that I didn't piss my social life away reading casebooks for 5 hours every day all semester. I have some friends that I haven't seen out at night since Hallow-fucking-ween. That's just ridiculous.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:03 pm
by Extension_Cord
NotMyRealName09 wrote:Although I studied until the studying was done, in the long run I found that for a 4 credit class, I would need about 4 full days (10-12 hour days) to outline, and if I could have an extra day to review and run practice questions, then 5 days total for a four credit class. Mind you, I didn't outline until the very end, so if your outlines are done or at least already started, you could spend less time just before finals.

EDIT: And an exam day did not count. If I took an exam, I didn't bother studying for the next exam that same day. Letting your brain decompress is important, and once done with an exam, have a drink and a nap, you've earned it.
My outlines took maybe a total of 10 hours to create. But I spend most of my time studying practise exams and going through my outline while I answer questions.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:05 pm
by c3pO4
Grizz wrote:
shepdawg wrote:I study until I feel like studying is a waste of time. That said, I am finished outlining and reading for classes 30 days prior to my first exam. I spend 6 days studying for each exam, 10 hours each day. This is my 2L schedule. 1L was 7 days and about 10-12 hrs/day for each class.
The mythical 2L gunner
he hath revealed himfelf

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:07 pm
by LeDique
More than you.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:08 pm
by Tanicius
Extension_Cord wrote:
NotMyRealName09 wrote:Although I studied until the studying was done, in the long run I found that for a 4 credit class, I would need about 4 full days (10-12 hour days) to outline, and if I could have an extra day to review and run practice questions, then 5 days total for a four credit class. Mind you, I didn't outline until the very end, so if your outlines are done or at least already started, you could spend less time just before finals.

EDIT: And an exam day did not count. If I took an exam, I didn't bother studying for the next exam that same day. Letting your brain decompress is important, and once done with an exam, have a drink and a nap, you've earned it.
My outlines took maybe a total of 10 hours to create. But I spend most of my time studying practise exams and going through my outline while I answer questions.
That's what I did too. Using the outline during the practice test is kind of like using training wheels, because even if you're allowed to use your outline on the real test, you want to diminish the time spent looking something up. Still, I've found it was very useful. There was nothing as frustrating as my prep for CivPro, where we were not allowed to use an outline on the real test. Before every practice test, I'd say to myself, "Alright! We're READY! No training wheels!" And then Question #2: "Shit! Okay, uh, legit don't know this, back to the training wheels!"

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:08 pm
by td6624
so when people say they spent 10 hours studying in one day, does that mean they had stuff in front of them for ten hours and took relatively consistent breaks to use the internet, watch tv, eat, etc.?

or is that actually 10 hours of real, actual studying?

if it's the latter then i am clearly missing something here.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:13 pm
by Tanicius
td6624 wrote:so when people say they spent 10 hours studying in one day, does that mean they had stuff in front of them for ten hours and took relatively consistent breaks to use the internet, watch tv, eat, etc.?

or is that actually 10 hours of real, actual studying?

if it's the latter then i am clearly missing something here.
The more I hear about it, the more I think it's bullshit. Perhaps I'm projecting, but I see myself as just an average Facebook-induced-ADHD-suffering millennial who can't ever make himself do one solid task for more than a few hours without an authority figure (i.e. exam officials) making me do it. There are only a select few classmates of mine who say they study for 10 hours straight and I actually believe them, and I believe them only because I'm saving them from panic attacks every other day.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:16 pm
by td6624
Tanicius wrote:
td6624 wrote:so when people say they spent 10 hours studying in one day, does that mean they had stuff in front of them for ten hours and took relatively consistent breaks to use the internet, watch tv, eat, etc.?

or is that actually 10 hours of real, actual studying?

if it's the latter then i am clearly missing something here.
The more I hear about it, the more I think it's bullshit. Perhaps I'm projecting, but I see myself as just an average Facebook-induced-ADHD-suffering millennial who can't ever make himself do one solid task for more than a few hours without an authority figure (i.e. exam officials) making me do it.
i am in this boat as well.

like even when taking an exam in the exam room i feel like i'd be more productive if i could just check a few websites REALLY QUICK just to recharge. in a studying environment those urges turn into hour-long breaks.

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:20 pm
by itsirtou
shepdawg wrote:I study until I feel like studying is a waste of time. That said, I am finished outlining and reading for classes 30 days prior to my first exam. I spend 6 days studying for each exam, 10 hours each day. This is my 2L schedule. 1L was 7 days and about 10-12 hrs/day for each class.
good christ

that honestly sounds like an unsustainable, insane study schedule. to each their own, i guess. i just can't imagine studying 60 hours for an exam, unless that includes outline-making time (which you said it doesn't). like...what do you DO for 60 hours? take practice exams?

Re: How many hours did you study for your finals?

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:35 pm
by bartleby
i literally haven't studied for my torts final on wednesday. worrisome. but i'm creating an outline now and will do practice tomorrow...

didn't really pay attention in class either. man, i'm destined for median or below (crossing fingers that this is one of those times where looking at the big picture/b.l.l. helps more than knowing everything)

i'm fcked.

holy shit my exam is tmr.