Examinations, especially law school examinations are anti-climactical at best. My contracts exam was no different.
When he walked into our classroom, on the first day of class, our contracts professor, Anthony Chase, told us “Contracts are about the blues. You’ve done me wrong and now you have to make it right.” After our examination on Tuesday, Prof. Chase has several members of our class singing the blues. We had a 178 question multiple choice exam. ‘Not too bad’ you may say but this 178 question beast had to be finished in 3 hours. So that’s 180minutes for 178 questions so a little over a minute per question. ‘Still not too bad’, I hear the peanut gallery retort, but what if I told you that many of the questions were a half page to a page long? Do you think you could just finish reading a question like that in under a minute?
I’m grateful that I can read rather quickly. What my comprehension is at that rate of speed I’m not sure but I felt like I got a good effort in. Many of my classmates were clamouring for an essay based exam. As if that would be any fairer. We’re all subject to the grade curve anyway. Some of the smartest people in our class still turned in their exams in before time, so has anything really changed? I don’t know. All will be revealed when grades come out. And then the real reason anyone was really fighting for great grades - Law Review- will have been decided.
As first year law students we hang so much of our hopes and dreams on the sharp precipice that is the Law Review cut-off. Eager to make a Faustian bargain just to be privy to the academic elite and walk behind the law school velvet rope to be part of Law Review. Is it all worth it? Is it all that it’s cracked up to be? I don’t know. I want in as much as the next guy.
Law school and Law review in the end is just like any competitive endeavour really. Like making the finals in the Olympics for example. The unfortunate reality is that people seem to only remember who won.
