Monday, December 19, 2005

Criminal Law Final

After having three hours of sleep, I dragged myself up out of bed this morning around half past eight, took a shower to wake up, and trudged off to campus. I expected to do some last-minute reviewing while having breakfast there, but instead became drawn in to a discussion among some classmates from my section. It was kind of nice to be able to understand everything they were saying, armed with the knowledge and experienced garnered from a marathon 12-hour review session with Shirley and Krystle on Sunday. That review session had prepared me to take a look at the big picture, while being able to zoom in fairly close to the details.

The exam today was interesting. There were 30 multiple choice questions administered over one hour and fifteen minutes. I had pretty much finished answering by about 45 minutes through, but went through it again just to make sure, and ended up changing a couple of answers. Still, the time seemed more than enough. There were two fact patterns, the first of which was divided into two questions, for a total of three essay questions. We were given two hours and twenty minutes to write; Shirley and Oshin were done well before the 10 minute mark was called. I, on the other hand, delved into the writing, typing ad nauseam it seemed. (I don't use spell check, so a lot of times I had to go back and correct what I had typed.) In fact, when the 10 minute mark was called, I still had yet to analyze the fact pattern for attempted homicide. I ended up taking somewhere between 5 and 7 minutes to do that. Forutnately that wasn't too long, or I might've gotten panicked seeing Shirley and Oshin sitting quietly, twiddling their thumbs.

Professor Natapoff had said that we'd have more than enough time, and I suppose she's basically right. The fact patterns weren't much if at all longer than the examples we'd seen in class; the difference was that, while we had been given limited time to answer the practice exams in class, here we had over two hours.

I felt pretty confident about a lot of my answers. However, one thing we've learned in this class is that no matter how confident one thinks one is, there's just no telling when it comes to this class. It's not so much the subject matter, most of us agree, as the interaction between the class and Professor Natapoff.

I'm guessing that the average number of correct answers for the multiple choice will be in the low teens. We'll find out, I guess.

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