How did I do? Forum

[Doingmybest]

Ugh like every 1L, currently beating myself up right now. Don't really want to hear the typical, you're fine but the truth. Just took my contracts exam, and felt like I spot most of the issues, but did not perform in my analysis. I was extremely nervous and for some reason felt like it was a better idea to go off with the facts that I remembered from the hypo and write my analysis on that. So obviously did not quote anything or go into to specific details about what was said between parties but analyzed more broadly. I know theres nothing to be done about it now, but I'm that type of person where I can't move on until I know for sure how I think it did. Whether bad or good, I just want to know so that I can move on. What do you guys think? Lack of analysis but hit most of the issue?

[UVA2B]

Relax. No one here can tell how you did based on this description. If you applied case law, or even the rules the case law drives, to the facts of your hypothetical, you were at least on the right track. You don't necessarily need direct quotes or things necessarily worded a specific way as long as its consistent with the case law. As long as your analysis on the issues you spotted was correct, you've done what you were supposed to do on the exam. How you stacked up against your peers is entirely another discussion. If you have no idea how well you did relative to your peers, how do you expect anyone here to be able to divine how you did?

The exam is finished. It's outside of your control now. Brush it off, clear your head, and start thinking about the next one, because that's the exam that matters most right now. The one you just took no longer matters in the least.

[KijiStewart]

Relax. No one here can tell how you did based on this description. If you applied case law, or even the rules the case law drives, to the facts of your hypothetical, you were at least on the right track. You don't necessarily need direct quotes or things necessarily worded a specific way as long as its consistent with the case law. As long as your analysis on the issues you spotted was correct, you've done what you were supposed to do on the exam. How you stacked up against your peers is entirely another discussion. If you have no idea how well you did relative to your peers, how do you expect anyone here to be able to divine how you did?

The exam is finished. It's outside of your control now. Brush it off, clear your head, and start thinking about the next one, because that's the exam that matters most right now. The one you just took no longer matters in the least.

+1

[lavarman84]

You're not going to know how you did until you get your grades back. You can agonize over it for no reason, or you can get over it and focus on the exams you have remaining. I recommend the latter approach.

[PeanutsNJam]

Based on your description of your exam, I can tell you that you will end up ranked #93 in your class.

[lowlands]

Yeah don't do this to yourself. Just try to forget about it and live your life.

[chandhi]

judging by your username, probably your best

[Ferrisjso]

Sit back and look back at your performance objectively. Worked for my first two exams, for my third one, nope I think I bombed that shit.

[cavalier1138]

Sit back and look back at your performance objectively. Worked for my first two exams, for my third one, nope I think I bombed that shit.

Oh sweet baby Cthulhu, now he's offering bad advice for students, too.

No. Do not look back on your performance objectively, subjectively, or anything in between. Don't look back at all. If (and only if) you end up underperforming (as in below median), then you can take advantage of any chances to review your exam and see where you can improve. But post-exam reflection before you get your grade is only going to have negative consequences.

[Ferrisjso]

Sit back and look back at your performance objectively. Worked for my first two exams, for my third one, nope I think I bombed that shit.

Oh sweet baby Cthulhu, now he's offering bad advice for students, too.

No. Do not look back on your performance objectively, subjectively, or anything in between. Don't look back at all. If (and only if) you end up underperforming (as in below median), then you can take advantage of any chances to review your exam and see where you can improve. But post-exam reflection before you get your grade is only going to have negative consequences.

Don't think not reflecting on your exams is reasonable advice for most people, people naturally going to be anxious.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Sit back and look back at your performance objectively. Worked for my first two exams, for my third one, nope I think I bombed that shit.

Oh sweet baby Cthulhu, now he's offering bad advice for students, too.

No. Do not look back on your performance objectively, subjectively, or anything in between. Don't look back at all. If (and only if) you end up underperforming (as in below median), then you can take advantage of any chances to review your exam and see where you can improve. But post-exam reflection before you get your grade is only going to have negative consequences.

Don't think not reflecting on your exams is reasonable advice for most people, people naturally going to be anxious.

Yes, but they can't do anything about it and they can't know anything about how they did at this point, so there is no. reason. at. all. to dwell on it; they're much better off managing their anxiety by focusing on other things entirely.

[zhenders]

OP, one of the most annoying things about law school (at least this has been the case for me) is that not only can you not be sure that you did well or poorly oftentimes, but you'll also have to wait for a while before you get your grades.

At this point, you simply aren't in a position to judge your own exams. There isn't really anything you could say here that would give any of us the ability to either. Though it's a bummer, do just keep your eyes forward. It's the only available course of action that makes any sense at all for what it's worth, you said the most important thing in your OP: pretty much all 1Ls feel this to some degree. The ones who don't often find themselves disappointed: high confidence on a law school exam sometimes means you crushed it, and sometimes means you missed the big issues and blew it. If you perceived difficulty, that's usually a good thing.

Eyes forward!

[UVA2B]

Sit back and look back at your performance objectively. Worked for my first two exams, for my third one, nope I think I bombed that shit.

Oh sweet baby Cthulhu, now he's offering bad advice for students, too.

No. Do not look back on your performance objectively, subjectively, or anything in between. Don't look back at all. If (and only if) you end up underperforming (as in below median), then you can take advantage of any chances to review your exam and see where you can improve. But post-exam reflection before you get your grade is only going to have negative consequences.

Don't think not reflecting on your exams is reasonable advice for most people, people naturally going to be anxious.

Please stop offering advice, especially when you have no context for offering it. You very well may be top of your class, or you could be the bottom. Your last exam could end up being your best grade, or you could be right on that you failed it. Do you even fully comprehend why all of these situations are possible? But still, you have literally zero idea how you did. There are people who walk away from an exam thinking they aced it, but they actually performed below median compared to their peers, while regularly people feel like they screwed up an exam, but end up getting their highest grade relative to what they expected.

That's the nature of law school grading. It could've been an easy exam that everyone felt good about, or it could be an exam everyone felt horrible about, but that does literally nothing to compare how everyone did relative to their peers. It's possible to feel more or less confident about a given exam, but that's absolutely without understanding how well you thought you did relative to how others feel they did (and more importantly, how they actually did relative to you).

Law students survive based on building to a final exam to the best of their individual abilities, followed by putting that performance out of their mind because it's irrelevant to the rest of their performance. If you're not doing that, and you're not compartmentalizing your 1L classes, you're just doing it wrong.

Please don't sully the quality advice that is offered here. You aren't qualified to speak about how one should approach the post-exam anxiety. Stop pretending like you are until you have some context for understanding the law school grading system and how others should approach it.

I anxiously await you giving even anecdotally qualified advice.

[Ferrisjso]

Sit back and look back at your performance objectively. Worked for my first two exams, for my third one, nope I think I bombed that shit.

Oh sweet baby Cthulhu, now he's offering bad advice for students, too.

No. Do not look back on your performance objectively, subjectively, or anything in between. Don't look back at all. If (and only if) you end up underperforming (as in below median), then you can take advantage of any chances to review your exam and see where you can improve. But post-exam reflection before you get your grade is only going to have negative consequences.

Don't think not reflecting on your exams is reasonable advice for most people, people naturally going to be anxious.

Please stop offering advice, especially when you have no context for offering it. You very well may be top of your class, or you could be the bottom. Your last exam could end up being your best grade, or you could be right on that you failed it. Do you even fully comprehend why all of these situations are possible? But still, you have literally zero idea how you did. There are people who walk away from an exam thinking they aced it, but they actually performed below median compared to their peers, while regularly people feel like they screwed up an exam, but end up getting their highest grade relative to what they expected.

That's the nature of law school grading. It could've been an easy exam that everyone felt good about, or it could be an exam everyone felt horrible about, but that does literally nothing to compare how everyone did relative to their peers. It's possible to feel more or less confident about a given exam, but that's absolutely without understanding how well you thought you did relative to how others feel they did (and more importantly, how they actually did relative to you).

Law students survive based on building to a final exam to the best of their individual abilities, followed by putting that performance out of their mind because it's irrelevant to the rest of their performance. If you're not doing that, and you're not compartmentalizing your 1L classes, you're just doing it wrong.

Please don't sully the quality advice that is offered here. You aren't qualified to speak about how one should approach the post-exam anxiety. Stop pretending like you are until you have some context for understanding the law school grading system and how others should approach it.

I anxiously await you giving even anecdotally qualified advice.

I was giving advice on how to deal with post test anxiety not to accurately determine someone's test grades. More particularly, avoiding the initial feeling of doom after you finish a test regarding things you did or didn't do. Of course it's easier to just put words in my mouth and pretend I said a bunch of shit I didn't say.

"Just took my contracts exam, and felt like I spot most of the issues, but did not perform in my analysis. I was extremely nervous and for some reason felt like it was a better idea to go off with the facts that I remembered from the hypo and write my analysis on that. So obviously did not quote anything or go into to specific details about what was said between parties but analyzed more broadly. I know theres nothing to be done about it now, but I'm that type of person where I can't move on until I know for sure how I think it did."

OP, like me(and I'm assuming most people) seems to be clearly worried that certain things they did or didn't do, I'm saying to be objective in thinking about those things, rather than what their fucking grade would be. Sorry for losing my cool a little but I'm just fucking tired of my words and attempts to make people in similar situations feel better be taken out of context.

[UVA2B]

I was giving advice on how to deal with post test anxiety not to accurately determine someone's test grades. More particularly, avoiding the initial feeling of doom after you finish a test regarding things you did or didn't do. Of course it's easier to just put words in my mouth and pretend I said a bunch of shit I didn't say.

"Just took my contracts exam, and felt like I spot most of the issues, but did not perform in my analysis. I was extremely nervous and for some reason felt like it was a better idea to go off with the facts that I remembered from the hypo and write my analysis on that. So obviously did not quote anything or go into to specific details about what was said between parties but analyzed more broadly. I know theres nothing to be done about it now, but I'm that type of person where I can't move on until I know for sure how I think it did."

OP, like me(and I'm assuming most people) seems to be clearly worried that certain things they did or didn't do, I'm saying to be objective in thinking about those things, rather than what their fucking grade would be. Sorry for losing my cool a little but I'm just fucking tired of my words and attempts to make people in similar situations feel better be taken out of context.

Your "losing your cool" shows exactly the problem. You have no idea whether you performed well in your analysis in contracts. You might approach it "objectively," but what that means has literally zero meaning because your issue spotting and analysis can't be understood without understanding how your classmates understood the material and analyzed it in comparison to yours.

I'm not going to fight you on this, but if you haven't realized to this point how you were previously unqualified to give advice, and how you continue to be unqualified to offer advice, then I'll just continue to join the chorus telling you you're wrong. You're beyond being told "objectively" why you're not helpful.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I get that you're talking about dealing with anxiety and not predicting a grade, but you aren't/the OP isn't in a position to sit back and look at the exam performance objectively, because the whole point is that you don't have the perspective/information necessary to be objective.

(@ferris)

[Ferrisjso]

I was giving advice on how to deal with post test anxiety not to accurately determine someone's test grades. More particularly, avoiding the initial feeling of doom after you finish a test regarding things you did or didn't do. Of course it's easier to just put words in my mouth and pretend I said a bunch of shit I didn't say.

"Just took my contracts exam, and felt like I spot most of the issues, but did not perform in my analysis. I was extremely nervous and for some reason felt like it was a better idea to go off with the facts that I remembered from the hypo and write my analysis on that. So obviously did not quote anything or go into to specific details about what was said between parties but analyzed more broadly. I know theres nothing to be done about it now, but I'm that type of person where I can't move on until I know for sure how I think it did."

OP, like me(and I'm assuming most people) seems to be clearly worried that certain things they did or didn't do, I'm saying to be objective in thinking about those things, rather than what their fucking grade would be. Sorry for losing my cool a little but I'm just fucking tired of my words and attempts to make people in similar situations feel better be taken out of context.

Your "losing your cool" shows exactly the problem. You have no idea whether you performed well in your analysis in contracts. You might approach it "objectively," but what that means has literally zero meaning because your issue spotting and analysis can't be understood without understanding how your classmates understood the material and analyzed it in comparison to yours.

I'm not going to fight you on this, but if you haven't realized to this point how you were previously unqualified to give advice, and how you continue to be unqualified to offer advice, then I'll just continue to join the chorus telling you you're wrong. You're beyond being told "objectively" why you're not helpful.

Now you're bringing past stuff into this(which is entirely different) which isn't related. Regardless, fine I'm going, more productive if other people who aren't going to be given this shit, try to help anyway.

Good luck OP, best wishes!

[UVA2B]

Now you're bringing past stuff into this(which is entirely different) which isn't related. Regardless, fine I'm going, more productive if other people who aren't going to be given this shit, try to help anyway.

Good luck OP, best wishes!

Exactly. People won't be bothered when they give good advice. And the only reason I bring your past bad advice into this is for you to (hopefully) appreciate that you might not have been prepared then to give advice, just like you're not exactly prepared to give advice now.

Look, like nony I realize that you're trying to help others with their psychological and emotional health, and that's a good thing. But if you don't fully realize how grades will fully inform that emotional and psychological health in the OP (or yourself), then you have yet to fully appreciate how law school grading can impact those things. Because performance on an exam can't be understood separately from the grade you end up getting on that exam. It just can't. If you felt great about your Crim exam, and get a failing grade, there is no amount of "objective" perspective that will matter. And if you think the world is burning down over your contracts exam, but you end up with an A, then your new objective analysis is that your exam went great. Timing matters here.

I think you're mostly an idiot, but my advice to hold off on offering advice to fellow law students has nothing to do with that. It's because you're not ready to offer advice. One day you will be. I disagree with prominent posters here regularly, but they're equally qualified to offer advice that is polar opposite to my own. That's the nature of the discourse. Just make sure you're fully ready to engage when people are willing to say you're blatantly wrong. You are wrong here, but you won't always be. Appreciate that (even if you continue to disagree that you're wrong here).

[PorscheFanatic]

Stfu ferris. You have 0 perspective and 0 ability to give advice. Solid hijacking of the thread so that you could feel better winning on TLS, just in case your "objective" analysis was wrong and you, in fact, did not win on exams.

OP, nothing you can do. If you have more exams to go, spend all of your waking energy focusing and prepping for those, and if/when you have no more exams left, get drunk, hangout with friends and family, or just do whatever you enjoy and keep yourself occupied and try to not think about law school whatsoever.

I recommend The Ranch on Netflix, though I'm not sure how the new season will be with a main character being written out and all that...

[mcmand]

OP, you'll be ok. Take it easy, relax. Put it out of your mind as best you can.
My winter break after 1L finals I just played video games non-stop to just shut my brain off. It was good.

Come back after grades come out (not for awhile) and check in, we will help you as much as we can!

[cavalier1138]

I was giving advice on how to deal with post test anxiety not to accurately determine someone's test grades. More particularly, avoiding the initial feeling of doom after you finish a test regarding things you did or didn't do. Of course it's easier to just put words in my mouth and pretend I said a bunch of shit I didn't say.

Just to add to what has already been said about this, the whole point is that this is a bad idea. Let's say that you're right and that your "objective" reflection on your performance calmed you down for now. What happens in 2-3 weeks when you get your grades back?

As was already mentioned, you don't know how you did, and you can't know how you did. So if you convince yourself now that you did a really decent job on the exam, that's not going to bode well for your mental health if your grade doesn't match your arbitrary picture of how you did. There is literally no value in trying to evaluate your performance on law school exams after the fact. You are much better off developing the habit of forgetting your exams as soon as you turn them in, because that will be better for you in the long run.

[proteinshake]

My winter break after 1L finals I just played video games non-stop to just shut my brain off. It was good.

so excited to do this