Finishing it with a bang

It took quite an effort to muster back some morale to continue on with the remaining two papers but it had to be done. I have not touched criminology for the entire revision yet and friday after EU Law was the first time I am glancing at it. To some extent, I am not so worried about it because it has no cases for me to memorise and it's just theoretical contextual knowledge. The only issue is to ensure that I do not overprepare for it since I also need the extra time to shore up my evidence revision. Looking at the past year paper, I did some question spotting by checking the pattern. I figured out that feminist questions would definitely be out since it has appeared in every single year. Left and right realism appeared to be that too but I have to pick only one to concentrate on. At first, I was thinking of right realism but after figuring out how complicated the essay would be, I switched to left realism. In any case, I was quite assured that both will come out as it was for the past years. On the day of the exam, feminism came up as expected but I did not expect right realism to be omitted. This meant that I had actually switched focus at the most appropriate time. At the same time, it could have so easily been the other if not for divine help. I thanked God quietly at the end of the exam for guiding me in the right direction. It was a minor morale boost after the criminology exams but it's not all over yet.

The biggest challenge ahead has always been the evidence exam and I've been shoring up since Sunday for it. The lecturer for this subject had been really miserly in giving any sort of hints. Once again, it's time to spot the pattern in the past year exams. It's a dilemma actually, which is to cover everything on a wide scope and end up forgetting a big part of them or to cover specific spotted areas and remember everything but with the risk of losing big if the gamble fails. I opted to go for the bigger risk and gamble and based on my calculations, it would be burden of proof essay (because it came out for the last two years) and bad character essay (came out every year). I took confessions, hearsay and silence and insurance. Initially, I had wanted to do problem questions but after thinking awhile, I figure out that essay questions would demand less memorisation of cases. Evidence problems have a knack of attracting more than 2 topics together and that could prove to be fatal. Although this meant that I had to start from ground zero in refocusing efforts to these two questions which was not touched in the initial stages, I went ahead with it. And it did paid off in the end. The night before the evidence exam, I was at the height of nervosity. This is the last hurdle for undergraduate studies and the tension was intense. I downed 3 cups of coffee to keep myself awake. At first, I was thinking of staying up all the way until the exams are over and then take a deep slumber afterthat. But after a while, I figured out that that may be risky since I may end up falling asleep during the exam. I took a 2hr sleep and even then, the cases are still running through my head. In the morning, I continued to rinse and repeat my self-made notes. It came to a point where I can no longer put anything more into my brains because of the tension. I was feeling a little worried because I felt that the amount of cases that I have in store were not adequate. However, since I'm banking on essays, I felt that I might just pull it off. At 1 pm, it was the hour of reckoning. I flipped open the exam questions the moment it started and I did a quick scan on what's on the paper. I paid special attention to the essay questions. Pap! Burden of proof in! Pap! Bad character is in! Two spot on already - and for the third, I hope that it should be an essay either on hearsay or silence. However, it turns out that the third essay question is on cross-examination of rape victims. That was a major surprise for me because that topic has never come out as an essay question before. So, this means that I can only rely on one of the two problem questions left. To stop myself from being distracted, I dashed straight away to pour out what I know on the two essays first and hope that when it's time for the third question, at least one problem question would be doable. The two questions were good as I rampaged at least 4 pages of content. When it was time for the third question, I read through the two problems and the first one was just too confusing with all the hearsay rules. This left only one last problem and it turns out that the 2nd problem is on the easy peasy confession and silence. Everything there was just direct and I could recall back all the important cases that are needed. At the end of the whole evidence exam, I had a very very good feeling about the paper.That's the irony of it - the hardest paper turns out to be the best work that I've turned in. The exam period may have started off rocky with juris and EU but I would say that 2.1 may have a good chance of being salvaged given the better performance in the final two. I gotta really thank God for pulling me up for the remaining journey.

With the end of the evidence exam, I realised that it's the end of my 3 years in law school too. That flew past by me in a breeze without me realising. I updated about it in FB and lots of people are surprised about it too. It's a journey that started from mid-2008 and the undergraduate journey now ends in mid-2011. I hope it's all worth it in the end.