Thursday, July 15
So There I Was...
Sitting on a bench in Embankment Gardens last Tuesday, flicking through Private Eye and the epic literary tome that is King's Bench, the Law School student publication. Dear God, is that a dire magazine to read through?!It has an horrific design, with lots of random shapes behind the text that make it quite awkward to read. The articles seem to be full of self-promotion and are very self-centred. Much like my own writing, to be honest. I thought I'd say it before anyone else does...
As a slight personal aside, how the fuck did you get so many mentions in that magazine, Old Man Mabbutt? Were you paying the various article writers, or does Big Ben love you so much that he has to mention you every other paragraph? What do I have to do to get my name in that magazine? Oh, and how were your exam results?
Whilst I enjoyed sitting in the sunshine, relaxing and doing nothing, I couldn't help but feel that I'd wasted the vast majority of yet another day. I was also no closer to satisfying the nagging anxiety concerning my exam results.
That was thankfully ended on Wednesday morning, when I got a phone call at the ridiculously early hour of 9am from my Mum. Come on, the hours were still in single figures, so there was no chance I was going to be up an about. I dazily took the call, scribbled down the results on a post-it, and went back to sleep for another hour or so.
So yeah, they'd been posted through to my parents' house, even though I remember asking for them to be posted to my London address. I swear that I made that clear on the form I handed back in authorising my initial pass / fail result to be posted online. But that'd be the inept bureaucracy at King's for you...
So, without further ado, I present to you the exam results for the modules I took in the second year of my Law with European Legal Studies degree:
- Tort - 51
- Evidence - 58
- Criminology and Criminal Justice - 58
- Advanced Criminal - 57
All of them were 2:2s, which isn't a bad result. My average is also better than last year, up to 57 from 51/52, which means that I must have put some work in at some point.
I am, however, very disappointed with the 51 in Tort. I remember walking out of the exam feeling very confident with how it had gone, and feeling that the sheer volume of revision I'd put in had been justified. And now I get confronted with the lowest mark (by some distance) of the 4 modules I took. I guess you can't always tell how well an exam went.
This theory is reinforced by the fact that my two highest scores came in the modules which I thought I'd done badly in, since I'd become very, very bored with them both since Christmas. I also thought that the piece of coursework I'd done for Criminology was absolutely dire, because I'd rushed it without planning it too much. Meh, such are the inconsistencies that make life interesting.
The only reason I can possibly think of to justify my two best scores is that they were both open-book exams. This meant that I could look things up (albeit rapidly) during the exam, and make better references when necessary. It was the first time that I'd sat an entirely open-book exam, and I'm now a big fan of them.
I think they are more realistic (well, so far as an exam can be), and more comparable to the real world than a closed-book exam, because in the real legal world, you have access to thousands of cases and academic articles as you prepare a case. Thus your analytical skills become more important, as does your ability to select relevant pieces of information from the masses of text in front of you. An open-book exam tests this skill, whereas a closed-book exam is perhaps more of a test of memory.
Anyway, that's my excuse for doing so poorly in the two modules I was expecting to do well in, and I'm sticking to it.
I keep reminding myself that these exam results may not even count towards my overall degree grade, because if I do better in my final year, those 4 modules will make up my degree grade. I do a total of 8 modules across my 2nd and 4th year, and the results from the best 4 equate to my degree grade.
Therefore, if I work fucking hard in my final year and get 4 2:1s, I'll get a 2:1 overall. On the other hand, I've now guaranteed myself a 2:2 from my time at university. In theory, I could do just enough to pass my 4th year, and still come out with a 2:2. Bearing in mind that I slacked a little this year, I could slack a whole lot in my 4th year!
But let's not start thinking that way. I need to work hard, get a 2:1, and the world will be my oyster. King's is a top 5 law school in the country, so to come out with a 2:1 would be a brilliant position to be in. To be honest, a 2:2 is pretty damn good too, or so I keep telling myself.
And that would be my exam results. A little disappointing, but 3 high 2:2s is a half-decent result, one that I'm content with. A little more work in the 4th year and I should be able to get the few extra marks that I need to get a 2:1. Here's hoping / praying.
