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Corsair wrote: The price listed on the website is for a case of 6. Still overpriced on the website, imho. Taittinger is good but not great.

Wait... 484 divided by 6 is... Umm...







...........








OH, 80 something!

Corsair wrote:
The price listed on the website is for a case of 6. Still overpriced on the website, imho. Taittinger is good but not great.

Might have been for a good year?

ak362 wrote:

Corsair wrote:
The price listed on the website is for a case of 6. Still overpriced on the website, imho. Taittinger is good but not great.

Might have been for a good year?

No year is that good. Let me tell you about my friend, Andre.

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thesealocust wrote:
I think the bottom and top of the curve isn't arbitrary, but its gooey middle... arbitrary isn't quite the right word, but it approaches it. I think that the process of grading isn't arbitrary at all, it's just that we don't know well enough how it works in advance.

Yeah that's probably more accurate. I was going to argue that it was arbitrary, and it is to a degree....but I'm sure there is a method to the madness...it's just that no one ever told me what it is.

Kohinoor wrote:

ak362 wrote:

Corsair wrote:
The price listed on the website is for a case of 6. Still overpriced on the website, imho. Taittinger is good but not great.

Might have been for a good year?

No year is that good. Let me tell you about my friend, Andre.

I love Andre. He got me through college.

prezidentv8 wrote:

thesealocust wrote:
I think the bottom and top of the curve isn't arbitrary, but its gooey middle... arbitrary isn't quite the right word, but it approaches it. I think that the process of grading isn't arbitrary at all, it's just that we don't know well enough how it works in advance.

Yeah that's probably more accurate. I was going to argue that it was arbitrary, and it is to a degree....but I'm sure there is a method to the madness...it's just that no one ever told me what it is.

Grading requires a combination of two entirely different metrics: How many "points" you earn on a test (and what your professor counts as a "point"), and how everyone else in your class did on the same test. It feels arbitrary, I think, because tests where you feel like you did well have the potential for everyone to do well, bunching up the curve and sticking you in the middle, whereas tests where you feel like you did poorly are probably the real son-of-a-bitch tests where everyone actually does poorly and you can separate yourself by just having a few more points than everyone else. As a result you feel disoriented, because the metric you're used to comparing everything to (your own performance) can't actually tell you much about what grade you're able to get.

I remember talking to my prof about grades after our (thankfully ungraded) midterm. It was a bloodbath. I identified many issues but got the analysis completely backwards on most of them, and had a huge gaping hole in a couple places, and still got a B+. The prof told me even the A and A+ answers weren't very good at all, they were just better than everyone else's.

That's kind of the way exams are. The curve changes everything. You could completely nail a test and get a B+ if everyone else nails it too, which sucks.

vanwinkle wrote:

prezidentv8 wrote:

thesealocust wrote:
I think the bottom and top of the curve isn't arbitrary, but its gooey middle... arbitrary isn't quite the right word, but it approaches it. I think that the process of grading isn't arbitrary at all, it's just that we don't know well enough how it works in advance.

Yeah that's probably more accurate. I was going to argue that it was arbitrary, and it is to a degree....but I'm sure there is a method to the madness...it's just that no one ever told me what it is.

Grading requires a combination of two entirely different metrics: How many "points" you earn on a test (and what your professor counts as a "point"), and how everyone else in your class did on the same test. It feels arbitrary, I think, because tests where you feel like you did well have the potential for everyone to do well, bunching up the curve and sticking you in the middle, whereas tests where you feel like you did poorly are probably the real son-of-a-bitch tests where everyone actually does poorly and you can separate yourself by just having a few more points than everyone else. As a result you feel disoriented, because the metric you're used to comparing everything to (your own performance) can't actually tell you much about what grade you're able to get.

I remember talking to my prof about grades after our (thankfully ungraded) midterm. It was a bloodbath. I identified many issues but got the analysis completely backwards on most of them, and had a huge gaping hole in a couple places, and still got a B+. The prof told me even the A and A+ answers weren't very good at all, they were just better than everyone else's.

That's kind of the way exams are. The curve changes everything. You could completely nail a test and get a B+ if everyone else nails it too, which sucks.

Yeah, that's true, and I'm not a fan of a curved system, but that's a completely separate thing from what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the advance-notice thing. Combining that with a curve isn't exactly arbitrary, but it doesn't seem like tests have quite so much to do with actually learning anything either. It is what it is, and I'll play the game, but that doesn't mean it's not kinda stupid.

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thesealocust wrote:Anything can happen - but I think it's extremely rare that everyone nails a law school exam. They are written to be un-nailable, especially in the time limit given.

Well, I meant to the extent that a 1L is going to be capable of in 3 hours. You walk out feeling satisfied, you can't think of anything you missed right away off the top of your head, you feel confident you did the best you could... and then in the hallway you start hearing everyone else saying the exact same thing, and you realize their excelling will nullify yours, and develop the urge to start buying liquor in bulk direct from the bottler.

vanwinkle wrote:

thesealocust wrote:Anything can happen - but I think it's extremely rare that everyone nails a law school exam. They are written to be un-nailable, especially in the time limit given.

Well, I meant to the extent that a 1L is going to be capable of in 3 hours. You walk out feeling satisfied, you can't think of anything you missed right away off the top of your head, you feel confident you did the best you could... and then in the hallway you start hearing everyone else saying the exact same thing, and you realize their excelling will nullify yours, and develop the urge to start buying liquor in bulk direct from the bottler.

This didn't happen with any of my exams.

But people need to STFU and stop discussing exams after the fact. I learned my lesson with Torts.

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thesealocust wrote:

JSUVA2012 wrote:But people need to STFU and stop discussing exams after the fact.

TITCR. Somebody I know *cough* met up with people to talk about an exam the day afterward. WTF is that shit about?

Dude, the only thing I would do the day after an exam is study for the next exam. No time for luxuries like discussion and speculation then.

Now, on the other hand...

thesealocust wrote:

JSUVA2012 wrote:But people need to STFU and stop discussing exams after the fact.

TITCR. Somebody I know *cough* met up with people to talk about an exam the day afterward. WTF is that shit about?

Wow, who the hell would do that? Sounds like a total dumbass to me.

Just posting in this thread so I can come back to it later and read through it, thanks for all the insight though everyone.

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steve_nash wrote:I drank an entire bottle of Andre by myself last year after I turned in my last legal writing assignment. Considering I weigh around 100 pounds, that night did not end well.

Because you lived?

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I have one grade to go, a multiple choice property exam that it is entirely possible I tanked. But to expend some nervous energy, I'll at least post here to talk about the four grades I have gotten back.

FWIW I'm a summer starter at Michigan. I'll post in order of exams taken.

Civil Procedure: Summer class. First law school exam ever. Hour and a half in-class multiple choice/short answer. Six hour home take home policy essays with a 2,000-word limit (for three essays). Did the short answers first and the multiple choice second because I had already been told that this was going to a time crunch, and I figured that I would answer the questions first that I would either know or not know. Multiple choice, my LSAT experience had told me, could be a never-ending maze. I think that was the correct choice, as a lot of classmates talked about not finishing the exam. I did. I barely touched the casebook in this class, using commercial case brief books instead (the professor discouraged "fetishizing cases", but missed class just once). I used the Freer "Introduction to Civil Procedure" supplement, along with the Glannon Guide and the E&E. Grade: A

Torts: Another summer class. Not to start a TLS flame war, but I heard early on that it was a "typing test," i.e the more words the better. But that's kind of the nature of the class. Torts fact patterns, as written by this professor, can have a million different variations. I barely touched a supplement for this class, at least not one worth mentioning. Never missed class. Made tremendous use of the professor's old exams. I did old ones with fellow students, making great use of what they found and what I missed. I also spent time actually writing out answers in a timed format instead of just spotting lists of issues. Unlike Civ Pro, I read every word that was assigned throughout the semester. I tailored my outline, which was quite brief, to things that had appeared on the professor's exams in the past (i.e. "If anyone is hurt, mention possibility of product liability"). I covered the main issues in my exam essays, then covered some miscellaneous ones at the tail end of each. Grade: A

Property: Not feeling too wonderful about it. Then again, neither is anyone else. Fingers crossed. Grade: TBA

Constitutional Law: Botched this exam something terrible, which is going to eat at me for all eternity because 1) I loved the class and came to law school to learn constitutional law and 2) I know that I understood it more than just about anyone else in there. That's not be overestimating my abilities, because I don't think that was the case in other classes, even ones I did well in, I felt overmatched by my classmates throughout the semester. But I knew how to pull it together for the exam. Here, I think I was overconfident because of my engagement with the material. I seriously even bought books on Marbury v. Madison, Lochner, etc. because I loved Con Law so much. Spent the study period retyping and organizing my outline. First mistake. I was able to really learn the concepts, but it was too late for that at this point.

An exam isn't about regurgitating your outline. It's about issue spotting. Visiting professor in this class with only one prior exam available. Took it the night before the exam. Should have used Siegel's and other supplements with fact patterns in order to practice, but Con Law is so vast, that might have been tough to tailor to my class. I suspect I killed the true-false section and the first essay. I know that I tanked the last one. Basically wrote an essay on the commerce clause when he was looking for other issues. I will be kicking myself forever, because the opportunity was there for an A, maybe even to book the class, and I straight up blew it. Blew it. Grade: B+

Contracts: The saving grace of blowing Con Law. I walked out of there feeling sick to my stomach because a few minutes after time was up, I knew what I had done. I realized I had not given him what he was looking for. I had three days to study for my Contracts exam. I didn't touch anything the night after Con Law. I think I just laid around reading The New Yorker. For three days, I did nothing but old practice exams, interspersed with constructing my outline around what was appearing on the exams. Professor had sample answers for all the old exams, which was a godsend. I didn't have to do them with fellow students like Torts. At first, I was awful to the point I thought I was going to blow 1L after a good start (with property still hanging out there, that still could happen). I steadily got better.

The best supplement I used for this class was the U.C.C. hornbook written by my professor, J.J. White, particularly the sections on the "Battle of the Forms" and various warranty provisions. No case brief book for this one, because he wrote his own casebook and it's not popular enough for an accompanying commercial briefs book. Wasted a ton of money on the Farnsworth hornbook the professor had recommended. The E&E was somewhat helpful, but only on a limited scale. I used "Introduction to Law & Economics" to nail down a couple of remedy concepts. This was a five-hour exam, and I had a moment of sheer terror when I realized that most of it was going to be multiple choice and short answer, with a medium-length essay and a long essay. But amazingly the practice exams paid off even in the short answers, because so many were mini-hypotheticals. Grade: A

I'm proudest of my Contracts grade because I feel like I was able to adjust mid-stream after a bad experience and self-correct. Plus, I think a lot of people were so drained by that point they didn't put in the time for that class they did the others. Also, after Con Law, people saw Contracts as an "easy" test they didn't have to study as hard for, because the concepts were so much more straight forward. I think that happened with Civ Pro and Torts, too. That's a trap.

My main advice, and take it with a grain of salt as I await my Property grade: The fast you can change from outlining and learning the material to applying it, the better. This time around, my study period is not going to be spent doing any outlining or memorizing concepts, unless it is within the framework of applying it via hypotheticals or commercial multiple choice questions.

Hope that helps.

I learned that 3 As can be really great, until a C pops up. FML.

Nietzsche_Addy wrote:I learned that 3 As can be really great, until a C pops up. FML.

Bracing myself for the same.

VincentChase wrote:

Nietzsche_Addy wrote:I learned that 3 As can be really great, until a C pops up. FML.

Bracing myself for the same.

I hope you don't have to experience it too. It's like dreaming you slept with Jennifer Aniston [insert your own dream bone] and waking up next to Snookers.

Nietzsche_Addy wrote:

VincentChase wrote:

Nietzsche_Addy wrote:I learned that 3 As can be really great, until a C pops up. FML.

Bracing myself for the same.

I hope you don't have to experience it too. It's like dreaming you slept with Jennifer Aniston [insert your own dream bone] and waking up next to Snookers.

I'm sorry ... bit isn't it Snookie?