Midterm Exam Review

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I have my midterm examinations in October. Exam week started this week, Monday 24^th October 2011, and my first exam was for ‘Legal Skills A’. I completed assignments for this class each week and had revised for the exam, however I do not feel too confident after sitting the three hour examination. 

Before the exam I was inevitably nervous, but I felt prepared. I had completed all of the reading and had revised so I felt comfortable. Yet as soon as I was handed the exam paper in the examination hall, my confidence soon deserted me… The exam was not what I had expected, or prepared for, and I spent the first ten minutes or so just staring at the exam paper. 

I had been given an English case, which was about twenty pages long, and an answer sheet with nine questions; some questions had multiple parts. I had three hours – which I thought would be my saviour. I started by quickly skimming over the important parts of the case, just to get a basic understanding. There was no clock in the exam room, or at least none that I could see, which for me was quite unusual. Starting with question one, I started to formulate an answer, remembering to refer to lines in the case. I skipped question two, with the intention of coming back to it later. I worked on the rest of the questions and came back to questions two and four. I answered two, but four was a little hazy. I could not find the relevant part of the text, so I just noted down what I had in my head at that time.

A lot of the questions also asked for the reasoning of the court, and asked us to explain why they reasoned that way. This was definitely a hard point, although I had revised methods of interpretation and reasoning, it is very hard to apply it to such a large case. 

After handing in the exam paper and leaving the building, I felt relieved that the test was over, but I immediately felt that I would have to re-sit the exam in January 2012. I will not get my results for at least a week, but I have already prepared myself for the worst; that way anything better is a bonus.

Read More

Evernote Application

With my midterms approaching I have been going over a lot of my notes and typing them up so that I have them available in different formats. After recently purchasing a new mobile phone I was just browsing the Android app market when I noticed a free app called ‘Evernote’. I downloaded it as it had a lot of good reviews and claimed to be a great way of syncing my notes from my laptop to my phone and other computers. After a few days of using it, I have to say that I am quite impressed!

It took around thirty seconds to create a free account, allowing me to use Evernote where it is installed. I started by creating Notebooks on each of my modules that I have notes. I would then create individual notes in each notebook for each lecture on that specific module. The program automatically saves any updates made to notes every minute or so. Once I have finished with the note, I can log in on another computer, or on my phone, and sync my notes. Notes created only ten seconds ago will quickly show up on my phone and I can browse through them with ease. 

The program also hasa a useful search feature, so that I can search all of my notes for a certain term or phrase, making it simple to locate a specific note, or part of a note that I may want or need to revise.

Another thing that I thought was pretty cool and useful was the ability to take snapshots using my phones camera. I can take a photograph of say a page in my textbook, add a title, some specific notes or tags and then add it to my notebook. It is quite nice if you want to have a reminder of what to read, or if you don’t have time to type your notes up. I didn’t think that it would be that useful as I thought the small writing would be eligible on the image, however you can zoom and pan with ease.

Overall I think that the app is great, and even better when you consider the fact that it is completely free. Whether you type your notes straight into the program, or use it just as a way to access your notes on the go, it is a great little app, and definitely one that I would recommend to Android users!

Read More

Midterm Examinations

The word ‘examination’ normally evokes a nervous reaction from students all around the world, and when you add the word ‘midterm’ law students everywhere start to cringe. Unfortunately for me my midterm exams are approaching much more swiftly than one would like; I am still struggling to believe that tomorrow (Monday 10^th October 2011) will be the start of my sixth week as a law student. 

Last week was the official examination registration date for the first term and I had to enrol myself for my midterm examinations which begin around October 20^th. To enrol my university uses a program called ‘ProgressWWW’ which lets you enrol for both courses and exams; it will also indicate your exam grade when it has been marked. Luckily I had no trouble enrolling because I was already fully enrolled for the university and had my student card, however some other students had to ask the International Student Office to enrol them, as ProgressWWW didn’t recognise them as students yet.

I have multiple exams in October, including English, Legal History and Legal Skills. I also have assignments for Legal Skills and IT For Lawyers. The final assignment for IT For Lawyers should be assigned tomorrow, and upon successful completion I should have finished the module – meaning that I will have a free day on Monday!

Out of the exam modules listed above, I think the one I am most concerned about is Legal Skills, which may surprise a lot of people, even myself to a point! I expected to be more cautious of the Legal History examination, however after spending five weeks in both classes, Legal History isn’t quite as bad as it sounds, and can even be interesting – occasionally. In all seriousness, the main reason behind my analogy is that Legal History is a subject where there are set right and wrong answers, and you can study the subject to understand it, whereas Legal Skills is more of an actual skill of being able to read and analyse cases. Although I have read multiple cases up to this point, all of my assignments that have been based on cases didn’t set me under exam conditions where I only had two hours or so to complete the task. On a positive note I should already gain the ‘bonus point’ for Legal Skills, which means that if I score a five in the test, the extra point will be added to make it a six. In order to acquire this point I had to complete seven assignments (so far I am on five, because we have one a week and we are now starting on week six), attend every class and perform an oral presentation (which I completed in week two).

So with my exams quickly approaching it is needless to say that I am spending more and more time reading and studying. I am also trying to become familiar with the layout and style of cases so that I can analyse them quicker and hopefully gain a better understanding before my exam approaches.

Read More