freaking out about grades

[krystal82]

So I truly think I bombed this semester. So badly, that I'm now actually fearing academic probation. I ran out of time on all of my exams except civ pro. I decided to write my exams instead of typing since i'm not a fast a typist. I felt so rushed, especially on my torts exam, where we only had an hour and half to answer 2 fact patterns and a policy question, since the first 30 minutes you could only read and plan. I defintely did not write as much as some people, at most 1000 words, I think.

I don't even know what to do differently for next semester.

I can't even concentrate on summer job hunt because i'm so upset.

Law school has been my goal for years, that even if i dropped out, I have no idea what I would do.


Please any advice would be appreciated.

[jacy85]

1) wait for your grades to actually come out before freaking out. this happens to almost everyone. I'd manged to convince myself that I'd bombed every one of my classes. relax. everyone else struggled with the same material you did. and worst case scenario, there's next semester.

2) If your grades aren't as good as you hoped, I'd highly suggest getting comfortable with typing, especially since you say you ran out of time on multiple exams. every extra little bit of info you can squeeze onto a racehorse exam is worth it. but don't worry too much about this semester. what's done is done. live and learn.

3) forget about your semester and get to looking for jobs. that's all there is to be said.

4) believe it or not, you'll adapt very quickly in your second semester. you've been through this once, and you'll figure out a more efficient way of doing it again.

Agreed with all of this.  And while you're compiling resumes and cover letters, look into typing programs. Yahoo games used to have a cute little game that helped with typing.  There also was a rather fun Mario Bros. typing game.  Perhaps you could find something on eBay or Amazon for cheap if you don't find anything free on the web that you like. 

[vap]

1) wait for your grades to actually come out before freaking out. this happens to almost everyone. I'd manged to convince myself that I'd bombed every one of my classes. relax. everyone else struggled with the same material you did. and worst case scenario, there's next semester.

2) If your grades aren't as good as you hoped, I'd highly suggest getting comfortable with typing, especially since you say you ran out of time on multiple exams. every extra little bit of info you can squeeze onto a racehorse exam is worth it. but don't worry too much about this semester. what's done is done. live and learn.

3) forget about your semester and get to looking for jobs. that's all there is to be said.

4) believe it or not, you'll adapt very quickly in your second semester. you've been through this once, and you'll figure out a more efficient way of doing it again.

Agreed with all of this.  And while you're compiling resumes and cover letters, look into typing programs. Yahoo games used to have a cute little game that helped with typing.  There also was a rather fun Mario Bros. typing game.  Perhaps you could find something on eBay or Amazon for cheap if you don't find anything free on the web that you like. 

This is all great advice.  It's difficult to say how you can improve test-wise without actually looking at your test.  When you get your test back, sit down with your professors and ask where you wasted time on the exam (where you wrote something down that didn't get any points).

But, if you ran out of time on the exam, you probably need to focus more on identifying issues and less on writing what the law is.  I think that's the mistake a lot of 1Ls make (I did it my first semester, too).  This especially applies to an exam like Torts (which you only had 2 hours to do??), where it's a race.  I wouldn't be surprised if other students in your class didn't finish.

Focus on time management on the exam.  You have to allocate your time on an exam, or you usually WILL run out.  I can only think of 1 exam in my fist 3 semesters where I didn't feel crunched for time. 

But as others have said, stop stressing out.  A) there's nothing you can do, and B) you probably didn't do as bad as you think.

[vap]

I am not a big fan of doing them -- i think i've done 1.5 total in all of law school -- but you sound like a prime case where practice exams would help.

OH man, I am a huge fan of practice exams.  I always do a few before working on my outline so I can focus it on the most important information.  I do more after creating the outline to get a full grasp of the issues that are likely to appear on the exam.

[krystal82]

Thanks for all the advice and tips guys. I just got my first grade, ended up in B+ in torts, i think my school's curve is 3.31 is top 1/3,so i'm pretty relieved. How do post exam feeling corrlelate with performance? I'm still very nervous about my other grades, because although the exams were more straight forward, the curve is bound to be tough.

[upgrade]

Thanks for all the advice and tips guys. I just got my first grade, ended up in B+ in torts, i think my school's curve is 3.31 is top 1/3,so i'm pretty relieved. How do post exam feeling corrlelate with performance? I'm still very nervous about my other grades, because although the exams were more straight forward, the curve is bound to be tough.

I'm still waiting for my first semester grades, but the word is if you walk out of a test thinking you did really well, you probably missed big issues.  "They" say that if you walk out of the test not totally confident in your conclusions and feeling as though you didn't cover everything to the depth that you thought was necessary, you probably spotted more issues than your classmates, which bodes well for your grade.

[krystal82]

I'm still waiting for my first semester grades, but the word is if you walk out of a test thinking you did really well, you probably missed big issues.  "They" say that if you walk out of the test not totally confident in your conclusions and feeling as though you didn't cover everything to the depth that you thought was necessary, you probably spotted more issues than your classmates, which bodes well for your grade.
[/quote]

That's what i'm afraid of, i finished civpro really early, and now i 'm thinking i missed issues. For my sanity, can someone tell me if it's possible to have both issue preclusion, and claim preclusion?

say you have  car crash between A and B, and A sues B for negligence and loses. A then comes up new evidence and reasserts her claim againist B, which would obviously be claim precluded. Can A also be issue precluded because the issue of B's negligence has been litigated and determined?

[vap]

That's what i'm afraid of, i finished civpro really early, and now i 'm thinking i missed issues. For my sanity, can someone tell me if it's possible to have both issue preclusion, and claim preclusion?

say you have  car crash between A and B, and A sues B for negligence and loses. A then comes up new evidence and reasserts her claim againist B, which would obviously be claim precluded. Can A also be issue precluded because the issue of B's negligence has been litigated and determined?

I think it's possible to argue both.  Probably yes in your hypo... but I haven't gone back to my outlines/notes or anything to check. 

Are you worried that you didn't include both on the exam, or are you worried that you included an "extra" issue?  Unless your prof says so, he/she might not deduct points for extra incorrect issues.  Some profs just ignore this discussion and award points for correct issues (and the time a student spent on a "non-issue" is simply wasted time).

[papercranes]

I had a grades nightmare a week ago. I don't know what happened but I woke up in a panic and knew what the dream was about. ick.

[;;;;;]

I had a grades nightmare a week ago. I don't know what happened but I woke up in a panic and knew what the dream was about. ick.

I had a similar dream.  I had a dream I had to retake the torts final and I didn't know anything and someone was arguing with me the entire test.