WHERE I THINK YOU SHOULD BE

There are a few things which annoy me to the point where I can label them pet peeves (i.e., somewhere on the spectrum between the pluralization of the McGriddle and Carson Daly). One of these is misused quotation marks (e.g., I question "your" leadership). They recently raised the cost of drying a load of clothes in my building by a quarter. This in itself was annoying, because I only brought down 75 cents instead of the necessary dollar, but would not have been nearly as irritating were it not for the explanatory note posted by the people in charge of this unfortunate hike. After a rather unconvincing explanation suggesting that this increase is justified by the recent rise in oil/natural gas prices, the note ends with the following declaration:

We would like to "thank you" for your cooperation.

Seriously, what is that?

Now, I initially thought this would be a very short post listing a few suggestions... alas, I was severely mistaken as to the extent of my long-windedness. Again. Nevertheless, here are some of my thoughts on where I think you should be:

1. Panicking: way too early for this -- give it about a week or so. You have plenty of time left and if you use it wisely (suggestions below) you can maxmimize the time you have and not even stress out at all! Okay, I'm deluded--but, there is plenty of time left to get yourself ready for exams.

2. Class Preparation: please tell me you're not still briefing.

3. Outlines: by now you should have:

• determined for each class, whether or not you will make outlines from scratch or not. If you were considering making an outline from scratch and have not yet started, I would strongly encourage you to not do that.
  
• your outlines pretty much ready to go (I'd say by the end of this weekend, they should all be done). Note that you'll still probably be updating your outline as you review them-- though most people tend to just make comments on their printed outline--so you really just want to have something that you can start going through. It doesn't have to be perfect--just have something you can start to review and take notes on. Ideally, you want to be done with the outline creation process and start spending your time next week primarily reviewing your outlines and other materials, be done with the outline creation phase and onto the outline review phase.
  

4. Practice Exams:

• By now you should have looked at a practice exam for each one of your classes. Make sure you get all the available exams for your professor. Sometimes the packets sold by the library don't have all the exams that are available for a particular professor -- make sure to check if there are more exams on the USC Law website.
  
• You want to get yourself ready to be able to start taking and reviewing practice exams next week.

5. Strategery: I think you should figure out a study plan for Finals:

• The first thing to know:
• Your exam schedule:
• Tuesday, 12/6: Civil Procedure.
• 2 days off
  
• Friday, 12/9: Torts.
• 3 days off
  
• Tuesday, 12/13: Contracts.
• 2 days off
  
• Friday, 12/16: LL&E.

In making a study plan it is important to consider (1) the order of your finals and (2) the days in between a final.

You should figure out how you want to allocate your studying time as between classes starting on Monday next week and all the way through the last day of finals. Some people can study multiple topics on the same day and some would prefer not to and rather focus on a single topic each day. By now you probably know which type you are so make sure to adjust your schedule accordingly.

The two days before an exam, I personally like to devote strictly to studying for the upcoming exam. For Civil Procedure I would recommend devoting (at least) the 3 days before. The main thing you want to figure out is how to allocate your time (1) at the beginning of next week (i.e., before you focus on Civ Pro) and (2) how to allocate your time within each day (including the days in between exams).

• LL&E Note: There is probably no need to devote more than the 2+ days that you have in after your Contracts final to the LL&E final (especially for people in Marmor's class). This assumes that you'll have all your studying materials set by that time.

In deciding what to do on a given day, here are some tips:

The Test-Taking Game Plan: in the 2-3-4 days prior to an exam, your goal is to prepare yourself to take that exam. To help further this process, I suggest making a game plan for each specific test in the days leading up to it. This is both a passive and active process:

• As you're taking/looking over practice exams, you're developing a sense of what the exam is like. And, the more exams you'll take the more efficient you'll be at spotting issues and formulating responses. The game plan for the test is literally a plan for what you will do in the 3 to 4+ hours that you're taking the final. For example:
  
• do you force yourself to plan a response to a question for 5 or 10 or 15 minutes before you start writing?
• It's important to be disciplined here--I think some preparation time is essential, how much you take is up to you. I like to think that everyone has an ideal time to prepare an answer. The better your initial planning, the more material you'll ultimately produce -- not only does this planning increase the initial pool of issues you have to draw from, giving you more to write on from the start, it also prevents lapses in exam-taking (i.e., being stuck with nothing to say) which tend to occur when you haven't thought out a response. These lapses force you to stop your flow and re-plan your answer -- this is usually a waste of time given that you're not only re-reading the fact pattern, but now you're planning the remainder of an answer, i.e., account for all the issues you've already discussed.
  
• should you outline the answer on paper or type it up on the computer?
• I personally like to plan an answer on paper because I think better that way. But after that is done, I like to type up an outline for the answer I just planned. I learned this the hard way, but it does ensure that you won't forget to discuss issues that you've actually spotted (damn you, thin skull doctrine!)
• on a multiple choice section, how will you allocate your time?
• I usually like to start by going through all the MC questions with short fact patterns or prompts and do all the ones that I can quickly figure leaving the tougher ones for round 2. Then I go through the questions with longer fact patterns.
• In more active fashion, you should figure out what type of document would help you execute this game plan (e.g., checklist) and work on putting it together.
  

• Timed Practice Exams Take Time: timing yourself on exams is great if you have the time because they can prepare your for the time crunch of an actual exam. However, it is also very beneficial to just go through exams, plan out how you would answer the question. Nevertheless, you should try to fit a timed exam at some point because (1) many issues are spotted as you're writing out your answer (i.e., you won't see all the issues when you're planning an answer), (2) you should have some practice with developing and discussing issues and (3) you never realize how much you actually know until you force yourself to take a test (usually you'll be quite surprised (I'll refrain from indicating whether or not this surprise will be pleasant)). That being said, I would try not to do a timed exam the day before the final (unless you do one early on). The day before the final
  

• Adequate Sleep Is The Most Underrated Study Aid: Yes, cheesy, but true. NEVER pull an all-nighter before an exam and think you're set because you chase some Vivarin with a can of Monster at 8:30 AM. Law school exams are long (never less than three hours) and are as much a test of endurance as anything else -- being on point for the entire time will undoubtedly help you so much more than a few extra hours of late night studying. Get at least 6 hours the night before.

Send me more questions if you have them -- there's really only so much time I can spend studying for my one final. Good times.