Finals...ugh

I forgot how much I detested finals. Real finals. Not finals in acting class or in my masters program, but finals that actually required a person to study--or at least read over some notes. Well, I guess I never knew how much one could detest finals until I was in law school. Really. The civ pro final today brought semi-grown men to tears. It was, hands down, the craziest test I have ever taken made insanely difficult by how highly timed it was. 36 T/F questions--each with 10-20+ lines of text to read and analyze, then answer T or F and then write an explanation about why you answered that way. Then 4 essays. One timed at an hour, two at ten minutes and the last at 15 minutes. The whole thing had to be complete within three hours. It was also open book--which you may think makes it easy--but frankly, you have no time to look anything up and half the time you don't even know where to look. There were people who completely didn't finish, some who skipped at least two of the essays, and I'm not kidding when I say tears. Truly. Tears. It makes me wonder what will happen when grades come out.

To make matters worse, our proctor left and forgot to come back in to stop the test. Remember the timing is important and we are graded on a strict curve. In these tests you basically get a point for every issue you identify, apply the correct rule, and analyze according to the facts in the question. Even an extra minute or two could garner the extra points that push the smart'uns over the line to the top 10% or something. So when time was really up, but the proctor hadn't come in, folks got antsy. Some (yours truly) had submitted the test as soon as their timer on the screen hit 180 minutes. I knew that the tests print out with a time stamp indicating exactly how minutes you took on the test and anything over 180 could initiate an honor code inquiry. And there is just something about law school that makes you want to live within the boundaries set by the rules. But others--a surprising lot of others kept frantically typing. Finally one kid--one who cried--said, "I think you should all stop now. Really. It is past time and you should stop." A few stopped, but some just looked up at him and kept on typing away. Some claim they couldn't hear because of their earplugs. Yeah, you read that right--earplugs. Apparently in law school we can't take tests with our classmates in large rooms as we have our entire lives without earplugs to block out the distractions and allow us to focus on the difficult intricacies of determining subject matter jurisdiction and whether offensive non-mutual collateral estoppel applies or not.

The proctor rushed in 10 or 15 minutes late. She had set the timer alarm to silent. A) why is there a silent setting for an alarm? Doesn't that kind of defeat the point? B) If it is silent, and it goes off in the library, is it really a timer? Anyway, she was late and flustered, and folks were mad. I was still in the supernal bliss of being done with my hardest class thus far and had just convinced myself that with a little divine intervention, I will not ever again have to sit in civil procedure in absolute terror that I will be called on and everyone around me is apparently speaking mandarin Chinese...when I only speak English.

I can say this much--there will be much ado raised about the tardiness of the proctor, but I don't care how many extra points the furious typists won, I am not doing that test over again. They can't make me. I hope...

This is me breathing a HUGE sigh of relief.