Exam Triage Forum

[NoBladesNoBows]

[TLSModBot]

At the macro level, start with the class whose exam comes first and go in order of exams. I did pretty much everything for one class up until a couple days before the first final, when I would then shift gears for prepping for the next.

For me the key was repetition of the material - going over it several times made it stick in my head. The most effective way was to do this in several different iterations:
1. Do the readings for each class
2. Attend every class and take hand-written notes
3. Re-read the material entirely before starting on outlining
4. Make outline from scratch

By the time I got to number 4, I pretty much had everything that I could remember remembered, and had an outline that I was intimately familiar with. Obviously the ship has sailed on 1 and 2, but I highly recommend doing 3 and 4. I had classes after 1L that my strategy was more to focus on 3 and 4, and I still did fine.

This isn't a shortcut, and it involves a lot of work, but my philosophy is that if you want the grades, you put in the effort to get it.

Maybe it's overkill and maybe what'll work for you is different - just sharing my experience. In any case, wishing you the best of luck with exams. Don't freak out - you can get through this!

[Desert Fox]

[Desert Fox]

[A. Nony Mouse]

Okay, I wrote a rambling thing, but then DF posted, and I think his advice is excellent. Do that.

I would say that it can be helpful to do a couple of practice exams pretty early in the process. There's a fear of "using up" exams, or wasting them before you have the material down. But first semester 1L I spent a lot of time trying to "learn" my outlines in a sort of vacuum, without really understanding how I was going to use the material. Having a sense of what you are actually going to have to do in an exam helps you know what you need to learn. So an early exam or two as kind of diagnostics may be helpful. Especially if you have a good model answer, or if you can get together with a number of people from your class (if you get enough people together collectively you'll all come up with pretty much everything the exam's asking about) (but enough = maybe 4. more than that gets way too complicated and annoying).


(Also, I agree that doing all the reading, going to class, and taking your own notes is really helpful, generally speaking, but yeah, that ship has sailed for this thread.)

[jbagelboy]

Calm down. Start reviewing practice exams. For the first few, just create an outline for your answers based on hot issues from the course syllabus and the broad strokes of your past outlines. Then compare to complete answers, where available. You should get a feel for your professor's exam style, how you should structure an answer, the core of the content and flow of analysis through major cases and analogizing/distinguishing the fact pattern to those cases.

When you're a little more confident with the process, take another exam but this time writing a full exam answer. Then compare your issue spotting with your study group/friends (this is the only reason to have a study group; the people that meet throughout the semester are wasting their time for the most part). Once you get the hang of it (2-3 exams for each class) it will seem a lot less daunting, even if you don't remember the details of each case. After you understand the format you can reread the cases or sections of a supplement where you have actual gaps in substantive knowledge.

It's not uncommon to totally freak out right now. These will be the worst weeks of your life. But you'll survive.

[A. Nony Mouse]

It's not uncommon to totally freak out right now. These will be the worst weeks of your life.

Nah, studying for the bar is worse. And while first semester exams are kind of a mindfuck, if these are the worst weeks of your life, you're living a pretty damn charmed life.

[ND2018]

Make a study schedule and stick to it. Sounds like you have 12-14 days of studying for 3-4 classes. That's 3-4.5 days study time for each class.

So take your calendar and count how many days you have left. Don't count test days as study days, you probably don't study after. Divide the number of full study days by the number of exams. That is how much you should devote to each exam. Lets say its 4 days (but it could be 3 or almost 5)--for the rest of this post this number is X.

Make those X days directly before your first exam for that first topic. Lets your first exam is Wed. 9th and its civ pro. That means 5th-8th are your Civ Pro study time. Dont think about it til then. This will be difficult, becaues your class mates will probably spend an inordinate amount of time studying the first exam.

Now mark the days between your exams as study days for the following exam. If you have Torts on Sat. the 12th, the 10th and 11th are two of your Torts days. Do this for your other exams.

You'll have left over days that you schedule for the non-first subject that you schedule between now and when you have to start your first exam. Schedule them in blocks and for whatever order you think will help you remember when you come back to them during exam week.

At this point: stop reading cases. And only read supplements and cases when you fundamentally don't understand them.

Find your best outline and make it yours. Spend a day reading through it, understanding it and all the rules, and then sort of memorizing it. Spend the next day doing practice exams. You can maybe do one untimed, but after that you need to do them all strictly timed. And I mean strictly.

AFter doing a few, maybe type into your outline some common rule statements. "The first issue is whether a Battery Occured. The elements of battery are 1) a harmful or offensive 2)intentional 3) contact" OR whatever it really is.

In fact you can typically take those from your practice exam answers. You'll be writing the same shit on exam day. And its good to have it all settled. Some profs even let you copy and paste from your outline. It's a huge advantage if you have all teh black letter law in exam ready language.

But you gotta stop your scatter shot approach asap. You can definitely learn each class in 48 hours.

This man is a hero.

[TLSModBot]

lol this is brutal trolling.

How do I study for the next two weeks!

Answer: Go back in time and read every case and attend each class and take great notes. HTH!

A. That's not what I said.
B. There's another semester in 1L so my recommendation kinda is forward-looking too.
C. Your schedule plan is a good one. My only disagreement is that I think writing your own outline helps you memorize the material AND piece it together structurally.

[jbagelboy]

It's not uncommon to totally freak out right now. These will be the worst weeks of your life.

Nah, studying for the bar is worse. And while first semester exams are kind of a mindfuck, if these are the worst weeks of your life, you're living a pretty damn charmed life.

I may be exaggerating a little for emphasis, so that the 1Ls can steel themselves. Obviously each of us have had worse experiences in an absolute sense (depression, death of family members, breakups, ect), but this may be the worst definable collective experience to this point -- the bar comes later.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I just think exaggerating its terribleness is an unfortunate self-fulfilling prophecy.

[jbagelboy]

I just think exaggerating its terribleness is an unfortunate self-fulfilling prophecy.

Different strokes -- I tend towards the abjectly negative so that when-if the experience turns out to only be mildly harrowing, I can recoup a little emotional dignity and save it as reserves for life's next unwarranted sucker punch.

[Desert Fox]

[NihilistLaw]

It's probably a good idea to put a detailed plan online about how unprepared you are and wait until enough people answer before you start studying.
That's what I would do.

[NoBladesNoBows]

[Hikikomorist]

[+] Spoiler

Make a study schedule and stick to it. Sounds like you have 12-14 days of studying for 3-4 classes. That's 3-4.5 days study time for each class.

So take your calendar and count how many days you have left. Don't count test days as study days, you probably don't study after. Divide the number of full study days by the number of exams. That is how much you should devote to each exam. Lets say its 4 days (but it could be 3 or almost 5)--for the rest of this post this number is X.

Make those X days directly before your first exam for that first topic. Lets your first exam is Wed. 9th and its civ pro. That means 5th-8th are your Civ Pro study time. Dont think about it til then. This will be difficult, becaues your class mates will probably spend an inordinate amount of time studying the first exam.

Now mark the days between your exams as study days for the following exam. If you have Torts on Sat. the 12th, the 10th and 11th are two of your Torts days. Do this for your other exams.

You'll have left over days that you schedule for the non-first subject that you schedule between now and when you have to start your first exam. Schedule them in blocks and for whatever order you think will help you remember when you come back to them during exam week.

At this point: stop reading cases. And only read supplements and cases when you fundamentally don't understand them.

Find your best outline and make it yours. Spend a day reading through it, understanding it and all the rules, and then sort of memorizing it. Spend the next day doing practice exams. You can maybe do one untimed, but after that you need to do them all strictly timed. And I mean strictly.

AFter doing a few, maybe type into your outline some common rule statements. "The first issue is whether a Battery Occured. The elements of battery are 1) a harmful or offensive 2)intentional 3) contact" OR whatever it really is.

In fact you can typically take those from your practice exam answers. You'll be writing the same shit on exam day. And its good to have it all settled. Some profs even let you copy and paste from your outline. It's a huge advantage if you have all teh black letter law in exam ready language.

But you gotta stop your scatter shot approach asap. You can definitely learn each class in 48 hours.

DF, this was amazing.

[Desert Fox]

[FSK]

[+] Spoiler

Make a study schedule and stick to it. Sounds like you have 12-14 days of studying for 3-4 classes. That's 3-4.5 days study time for each class.

So take your calendar and count how many days you have left. Don't count test days as study days, you probably don't study after. Divide the number of full study days by the number of exams. That is how much you should devote to each exam. Lets say its 4 days (but it could be 3 or almost 5)--for the rest of this post this number is X.

Make those X days directly before your first exam for that first topic. Lets your first exam is Wed. 9th and its civ pro. That means 5th-8th are your Civ Pro study time. Dont think about it til then. This will be difficult, becaues your class mates will probably spend an inordinate amount of time studying the first exam.

Now mark the days between your exams as study days for the following exam. If you have Torts on Sat. the 12th, the 10th and 11th are two of your Torts days. Do this for your other exams.

You'll have left over days that you schedule for the non-first subject that you schedule between now and when you have to start your first exam. Schedule them in blocks and for whatever order you think will help you remember when you come back to them during exam week.

At this point: stop reading cases. And only read supplements and cases when you fundamentally don't understand them.

Find your best outline and make it yours. Spend a day reading through it, understanding it and all the rules, and then sort of memorizing it. Spend the next day doing practice exams. You can maybe do one untimed, but after that you need to do them all strictly timed. And I mean strictly.

AFter doing a few, maybe type into your outline some common rule statements. "The first issue is whether a Battery Occured. The elements of battery are 1) a harmful or offensive 2)intentional 3) contact" OR whatever it really is.

In fact you can typically take those from your practice exam answers. You'll be writing the same shit on exam day. And its good to have it all settled. Some profs even let you copy and paste from your outline. It's a huge advantage if you have all teh black letter law in exam ready language.

But you gotta stop your scatter shot approach asap. You can definitely learn each class in 48 hours.

DF, this was amazing.

I've been in this situation 6 times lol.

Going into my 5th set, this is literally exactly what I've fallen into by being lazy & trying to optimize what shits I do give. Done reasonably well with it.

[Desert Fox]

[smaug]

I like DF's plan. I actually agree with Capitol_Idea, and think you can spend a day outlining for each class, but apparently I am an aberration/that process takes more time for other people. Other way no harm in taking someone else's and reworking it/understanding it. Just spend a full day doing that.

I did some godawful number of practice tests during 1L. I don't think they were necessary. You're better served looking at model answers and talking to people the year above you: find out what the exam was like and what sorts of things the professor seemed to like. Nothing worse than gearig up for a horse race brain spew to find out that the professor prefers terse answers.

[smaug]

I also tend to think hornbooks are flame. Maybe find the short ones and read through them in an afternoon. That's good enough for everything other than Civ Pro, where you want the Glannoj and should do the problems.

[smaug]

Biggest advice I have is this isn't really that hard. Your professors want you to think the questions are hard, so just show (1) that you know what they are asking, (2) that you know which cases/rules/facts militate in each direction and (3) apply them with some BS and clearly come out one way or another.

Just having that format down pat will get you a long, long way.

[Tiago Splitter]

I like DF's plan. I actually agree with Capitol_Idea, and think you can spend a day outlining for each class, but apparently I am an aberration/that process takes more time for other people. Other way no harm in taking someone else's and reworking it/understanding it. Just spend a full day doing that.

I agree with this. I think the best way to assure not totally fucking up is to make an outline. I can't imagine just walking in with someone else's and getting anything out of it but maybe there's a middle ground here.

What is your actual finals schedule? It sounds like you got at least 3 days per class which is plenty of time to go from knowing nothing to being in contention for a good grade.

[Desert Fox]

[FSK]

I've done both, and I've not found any marginal value in making my own outline (which took 16 hours) from stitching outline bank + notes (which takes maybe 6 if you're hyper efficient). They both get me to the same baseline I need to jam a practice exam.

Comparing your answer to a model answer, or even discussing with classmates has to be one of hte best things you can do. You need to think about what a good answer is and understand that, then understand why your answer was bad, than redo and iterate