This week on the Law School Insider we have Associate Professor and Auxiliary Dean at Cooley Law School, David Tarrien on Battling Test Anxiety and Avoiding Law School Exam Disasters.
You have an intentionality and purpose as it comes down to doing well on the exams that you take in law school. To accomplish this you have to set up specific benchmarks with goals along the way to have high performance on your exams at the end of each term.
The best way to deal with anxiety is just that. Anxiety comes from a feeling that you are not in control of what is happeing around you. In terms of law school anxiety comes in as you get closer to exams.
Be deliberate on your study schedule. In the first week or even before set up a schedule to study each day for each of your classes. Have goals. Once your have your goals you can start to achieve the success and full comprehansion.
Rome was not built in a day. So doing well on your exams takes time and effort.
When you go to law school things will be different than in your undergraduate or other educational experience. In law school problem solving is the new skill that you are learning. In law school the knowledge that you learn in a term will not be specifically asked of you but instead you will be posed with a scenario or question to be able to look at with the body of knowledge that you are learning throughout a term.
The best way to get a new skills set is to deconstruct it. Performance based outline. Professor Tarrien will look at an old exam with a student and deconstruct the question and possible answers to better understand good answers and why they are important for this problem. They will look for the law, the facts and the reason for the question and scenario. By doing this you will get a better understanding of what you will need to do to be able to be successful on future exams.
If you are not successful on exams. You have to remember that if you have a failure, the only reason you truly fail is if you let the failure to define who you are. You have to take the next steps to start to move forward such as:
- Getting your bluebook
- Talking about the question with a faculty member or other academic support person
- identify what skill set was missing in the answer that you gave a
You have to have tough skin in law school and be able to analyze your success and failure in law school. If you can do this you will find ultimate success.
Did you like this interview? Do you have a question for Professor Tarrien? Leave a comment below to let me know!
Are you a practicing lawyer? A law student? Would you like to be a guest on an upcoming episode of the Law School Insider or do you have a topic you would like to hear about? Send me an email at lawschoolinsider@cooley.edu
