Tuesday 29 April 2008

First Exam - Admin

The first exam administrative law was well shit. Needless to say I had spent a week fannying about and had managed to cover three topics. Good. Then when it came to Sunday I thought better do another few topics. Good. Came to 10am on Monday and thought now I can start revising them. Bad. Came to the exam, lack of no sleep and ridiculous amounts of pro plus and coke meant that my penmanship wasn't terribly great. Also whilst I had done all the work, every piece of reading there was to do for my chosen topics, when it came to answering the questions I could only remember half of it. Problem.

I answered one question on amenability, easy, YL etc what different lawlords said, managed to go on about Baroness Hale for ever, and then summed up the majority as I couldn't remember what the individual law lords said. Then I answered a question on legitimate expectation, bad. Whilst my opening paragraph may have been "ok" the rest of it was just what I knew about legitimate expectation as I didn't really understand the question. It had "substantive" in it somewhere, and it threw me off.

What was annoying was that most of the people I knew had revised the essay topics that had been set for this term, yet none of them came up in the exam, our lecturer said that ADR and PDR were relatively new and we wouldn't have to focus on them too much. Yet they came up on the exam paper. Which brings me to another point, Lecturers lie for some reason they do, when asked last year a property lecturer said that "chattels and fixtures are unlikely to come up because they are too easy as you have just done an essay on them" and they came up.

Comments from first years also indicate that a certain contract law lecturer, who threw in a couple of wild cards in last years exam, has said that our year is getting hard papers, so that the first year can now look good, and they have been promised easier papers. 1 in 3 people fail the first year at my university, and most if not all fails were contract law last year.

So I was annoyed but I'm over it at least I know I have passed.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Admin Law's a toughie I think, one of those subjects you either really REALLY love or absolutely HATE with a passion. There seems to be no middle ground!
Don't freak yourself out with too much analysis of what you didn't do and what you could have done better, you'll drive yourself nuts!
Concentrate on the remainder of your exams with the promise of a massive end of term bender when all is over with!
Will keep my fingers crossed that all goes well for you!
(PS: The subject that carried the biggest failure rate among First Years at my Uni was also Contract; when I studied it,after telling us for a whole YEAR that the exam would consist of three questions the swine altered it at the last minute! When we all turned up for the paper there were FOUR questions to be answered in THREE hours - the first we'd all heard of it! Talk about heart attack central!!!

Poppy said...

LLS,

Exams are awful things especially in that one never really has an idea about how one has done until the results are published!!

I'm sure you have done well enough - lookihg back on it, uni exams were actually a lot easier than I felt they were at the time, and I'm sure you will feel the same with a bit of (admittedly) rose-tinted hindsight!

Good luck with the others.

LL

Android said...

The good thing is that you won't have to worry about Admin law in your 2nd+3rd years, when results do count!

Minxy, that happened to us once! Although it turned out that we got the wrong papers, so we had to sit there for half an hour, waiting for the correct papers to be faxed through :))

Mr Pineapples said...

Hey Booze Student.

Mr P got a First - a bleedin' First - wanna know how he did it?

Do you?

Really?

Well - He worked his gangoolies off - organised his work like a military operation - skeleton-ised all of his work - then skeleton-ised the skeletons.

Learned absolutely EVERYTHING....no question spotting whatsoever.

Got a First easily.....easy...easy.

Did not booze....did not go out to raves, tear-ups, parties; but did a lot of sport.

What you on for?

P smells a Desmond..

Mr Pineapples said...

Oh - and when P applied for Pupillage - He applied to ONLY four places

He got 4 interviews and

3 offers......

Why?

Because He treated it all SERIOUSLY....no fannying around...every interview was practiced....researched....prepared for...

You want to succeed then act like a bleedin' grown up. It's a dog-eat-dog world in Law - being a boozer aint going to get you Nothing.

Preach It P

Lost said...

Thanks for the comments Mr P, probably a good way to revise.

Mr Pineapples said...

hey booze cruise

P suspects you need a boot up the backside......you seems a bright chap....so get working