ah, exams ... what can I say? I find the process of preparing for them more tedious than difficult. Actually that applies to taking them as well.

This is my theory, perhaps soon to be proven wrong. Performance on an exam (probably any exam) is a combination of three factors. Your preparation, your exam taking skill, and your natural aptitude for the material. The aptitiude you can't do anything about. The preparation is under your full control.

The exam skill, half and half: you can take practice exams and hone your technique but are still people who are naturally better able to get out more ideas in unit time. So that really means only half of your total performance is under your control.

I started the semester with a pass/fail mentality, but as the weeks went on I could feel myself raising the bar ... "at least Bs" ... "at least one A" ... ugh, talk about inconsequentialities. I had to pause and ask, what do I really care? Like any good student I have been propelled through my academic career with a deep sense of responsibility to continuing earning the best possible grades.

But if anyone should be able to attest to the saying "grades don't matter in the real world" at this point it should be me, and it's certainly been true so far. For me there's something about taking an exam that puts me back in that student/teacher inferior/superior dynamic. It somehow occludes the truth of the situation: the professors are doing their job, they don't really like grading exams any more than I like taking them.

I'm back to a pass / fail mentality. The law degree is valuable to me; being ranked high in the class has extremely little incremental value to me compared to the work that would be necessary.

06 Dec 04