the perils of open book

After a fairly successful semester (or at least I think it has been fairly successful) I'm in the midst of exams. I have now decided that I hate open book exams. Why? There are a number of reasons for this hatred, but they are not because I think they are more difficult.

It is no secret to my friends that I regularly wage psychological warfare... on myself. Yes, I'm one of those people who manages to 'psych' myself out about almost every piece of assessment. Having failed subjects previously has definitely added to my fear of failure as I have lived through it. Open book exams seem great - you can use any source you want to answer the questions. Of course, what if you don't bring something and it turns out to be VITALLY important in the exam? What if you see someone using a particular book which you have but have no idea how they are using it? The topics covered in the book don't seem to be on the exam - what do they know that you don't know?

As a result, I have a tendency to go overboard. For my open exam last night I vigorously prepared. It was for Trusts and I had done fairly well on the assignment, needing roughly 20% to pass the subject. I spent much of the week preparing my notes into an easily digestible form, ending up with a hefty 80 pages. I went all out, even including extracts as I had no intention to print out the giant pieces of legislation that we had covered. I then prepared some answer guides that were around 100 pages, leaving my notes almost irrelevant. Of course, these guides were AMAZING and I'm glad I had them.

In the end, I decided that I would print the legislation. My upcoming Property exam is closed book but we are able to take unanotated legislation in, so I figured I needed a copy of the Property Law Act anyway. I have an amazing (by which I mean cheap) laser printer and figured binding isn't too expensive. I was feeling lazy, so I printed out the Trusts Act, Successions Act and Property Law Act in full - one page per page. I couldn't be bothered to work out how to print back to back (I forget every time I do it!) so my Property Law Act is a hefty 300 pages, plus the binding! Didn't think that through.

I also took my textbook and a Equity & Trusts Questions and Answer book. I had so much stuff I could barely carry it all into the exam and was surprised to see how little some people took with them. I have a tendency to go overboard, but I realised that I had reached a new level. I thought back to other exams where I took legislation and realised I very rarely, if ever, actually looked through them or used the tabs. Other people had a few pages of  notes and others didn't even bother bringing the textbook! Admittedly, knowing the subject had an open book exam meant I didn't attempt to memorise through the semester, but rather focused on understanding, but still... I had so much in terms of notes!

As students entered the room I saw a number who also had the Q&A book with them. I have had very few open book exams, but have made an attempt to bring a Q&A book whenever I have. I have often found them useful, mainly for working out a good structure and approach, but moreso when I am fairly familiar with the content of the book. This time I spent very little time working on questions from the book. Regardless, when I saw the girl in front pull hers out from the start I was worried. I made an attempt to use the book later on in the exam, but I couldn't. I was worried - why was she using it when I couldn't find something it worked for? Luckily, this didn't bother me for too long as I remembered I had the answer guides with me. I worked through the problems I could using the guides where I could. One of the supervisors seemed fascinated by my bound notes and kept looking at them whenever he passed. Of course, law exams are never a straight forward time when question one addresses a discretionary trust, question two addresses a charitable trust and so on.

Although it has quite possibly happened before, I do not recall ever being told that we are unable to use materials during perusal. I had already had an open book exam earlier in the week for medical law and used my notes extensively in perusal for planning my responses... or at least I think  I did! As I said earlier, my attempts in Trusts have been focused on understanding the content and even though I think I have a fairly solid idea of how a trust works, I still like to check where I can. For me this was also the case for Criminal Law, with no exam for the first semester of the subject last year and an open book for the second. I remembered a significant amount on Charitable trusts so tried to use what I knew to plan out one answer, but without my guide I knew I was forgetting valuable information. In hindsight, I should have used the 10 minutes to plan out and begin my answers for the smaller questions. Alas, that was not the case

I'm extremely glad that I'm finished with trusts... at least for a few weeks. I spent so much time working on my notes this week that I have neglected property, to an extent. Even though there are only a few days left, I'm still trying to work through my notes and I'm not sure how much I actually remember. I have been working on my flash cards for a few weeks now so I am fairly certain I have memorized a fair bit about the cases that are relevant, but I still need to remember the contexts! Ahh!

One thing I am glad of is the overlap between property and trusts. While I didn't memorise anything for my trusts exam, I think I can remember the overlapping areas. I think. I hope. I suppose I should probably get back to it!

Good luck to anyone else working through exams right now!