Truths About Final Exam Time

Once you accept these truths, the easier it will be to come to terms with studying and relaxing after finals.

It is time once again for final exams. It is that time of year I call the silly season, the time between Thanksgiving and the New Year during which law students turn their minds towards giving thanks, the hope of the new year, being with family, and OMG I don’t have time for that I have to study for finals!!!!

The Panic (in capitals because it is a known phenomena) sets in after the tryptophan-induced coma of Thanksgiving wears off. At that point, there is wonderment: Where did the semester go? What have I done with my life? And what is the professor going to test me on that I didn’t read or study?

With those thoughts in mind, here are some truths about finals you are just going to have to accept:

  1. Any review session you attend will be utterly worthless. However, any review session you fail to attend will be invaluable. The reason is: You aren’t getting what you really want from the review session, which is: What’s going to be on the exam? Minor answers to nagging questions will seem small compared to that. If you miss a review session, you’ll feel it would help you with the gaps in your knowledge.
  1. You will have an insatiable desire to talk to your peers, and instantly regret it. This is because you are seeking comfort, as your peers are as well. Thus, you are both, at the moment, seeking to drain the other, and you’re both without energy.
  1. SQUIRREL. Yes, that squirrel. Shiny metal objects. Distractions. You will feel a pressing need to do anything other than study. That grout in the bathroom needs cleaning, right now! Sure, I didn’t notice it, or the talking mildew until now, but now is the time. No, it isn’t. You are avoiding that which you fear, preparing for the final exam.
  1. Your notes will no longer make sense. Funny. They seemed to make sense before Thanksgiving. What does “Ray’s Llaso BBQ” mean? Oh wait, your pre-Thanksgiving brain knew it was Res Ipsa, but after Thanksgiving your anxiety has kicked in, transforming your notes into a beautiful yet incomprehensible language.

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  1. You’ll be familiar with the 7 stages of grief.   Shock and denial I’ve covered, with the denial being all semester and the shock being the post-tryptophan epiphany. That panic in your chest is pain, in part caused by the guilt you feel when you failed to follow my advice about studying and bought the $3,000 worth of commercial outlines that sit unopened on your desk. Anger and bargaining will kick in, but mostly anger as you curse the name of your professor for doing this to you. Depression sets in, as you feel hopeless about the tasks in front of you. In the upward turn, you tackle studying, avoiding the squirrels and suppressing the anxiety as best you can, eventually studying hard and working toward your goal.   Acceptance and hope come in after several beers post-exam.
  2. Then you will start the cycle over again with the next final.

  1. You will hate your non-law school friends. They will come out of the woodwork to try to convince you to take breaks you can’t afford. It will sound a lot like this. Because you’re frozen with finals fear.
  1. Your dreams will be dystopian in nature. You’ll have dreams about being in class, cold called, unprepared, everyone around you looking at you like you’re stupid, and you’ll wake up still feeling like that. That’s just the insecurity feeding into your subconscious.
  1. Topper will annoy you. If you haven’t read Dilbert, one of the characters is “Topper.” Any story you tell he will match, possibly to the point of lunacy. It is much like the Four Yorkshiremen skit in Monty Python. Topper might ask: “How much sleep did you get? 2 hours? Oh, I only slept 5 minutes! Studied all night.”  What Topper means to say is, he stayed up all night, but didn’t study much at all because he was too delirious from exhaustion.
  1. Any peer’s exam studying strategy will seem infinitely superior to yours, regardless of objective merit.   If a peer says he is going to read and memorize the entire Federal Rules of Evidence and Civil Procedure and nothing else for your Civ Pro exam, his strategy will seem completely sensible at the moment. Again, that’s the fear talking.

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  1. When you finish with your final exam and are out in the halls talking to your peers, everyone’s answer will seem better than yours.  Run — do not walk — away from them. Better yet, have an agreement beforehand that you will not talk about finals after finals.

Once you accept these truths, the easier it will be to come to terms with studying and relaxing after finals.

Good luck to you all.


LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here and on Twitter (@lawprofblawg). Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.