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 10th 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 20th. 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.
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