At last! At last exams are finished. Along with exam completion comes the realization that the first semester is finished, too, which means I managed to survive part of the first year of law school, and still appear to have all of my faculties well in tact. The last couple of weeks has been incredibly difficult, but along with the challenges comes a wonderful sense of accomplishment.

Now that I have a bit of distance from the madness, I feel that I am properly equipped to comment on it. I intended to write in the midst of the exam preparation and actual writing part of the last two weeks, but it just didn’t work out that way. Each hour was spoken for, and by the time I felt that I had a minute to myself, that minute was soon taken up by guilt or exhaustion. Worse, hours after my third exam, I caught a nasty stomach flu that made me fantasize about cutting my own head off just to gain some relief, and needless to say, this compromised my last test considerably. Still, the overall exam-writing finale was exhilarating.

During my undergraduate years, I was an independent agent. I loathed groups, and while I tried to participate in a couple of year-end study sessions with some classmates, it was ultimately unsuccessful because, well, people simply bug me. That, and it is very difficult to find compatible characters that complement my study style and general work ethic. Thus, I studied solo for most of my four-year degree, and it worked out well for me. Once I entered law school, most of the social discourse was filled with finding and forming study groups, and how to create the most magical CANs (condensed annotated notes) in the land. Naturally, I resisted all of it, until I realized that the amount of material was too much for one person to manage alone, and I also learned that listening to other classmates’ perspectives could often be insightful and even helpful. Thus, I asked three other members of my section if they were interested in studying together, and we held an initial meeting to create a schedule.

As you might expect, things didn’t go exactly as I planned. First, one of the members asked to include a couple of others because she was good-friends with them, and felt badly about leaving them out. Suddenly our number increased from four to six. Next, the first time we met, there was discordance about what to study and how we wanted to approach the material. Soon after, our number grew to eight, and this was the breaking point for me, and others, too. There were too many people involved to truly get anything done. Soon, a few of the group stopped coming, and eventually the cluster dissipated.

I was disappointed, but also a bit relieved. The dynamic of the group was only reaffirming why I hadn’t bothered to study with hordes of people in the first place. That, and I am guilty of being a bit of a bossy-pants and I found the unruliness and disorganization of our meetings tremendously frustrating. Somehow though, things turned around. Two original group members and I got together to chat one day, and a natural bond formed between us. At once, we found ourselves meeting regularly and successfully studying together. All of us shared the same work ethic and general approach to the material; all of us were highly motivated to do well. I am happy to report that we spent nearly every hour together over the course of two weeks, and I have never enjoyed studying more in my life. And I am sincerely stunned by how well it worked out. Better yet, I have two brilliant new women in my life and I couldn’t be more grateful. Strange how things work out sometimes; I’m officially a groupie of group work.

So, exams are finished, and what does it all mean? Well, my gals and I worked like we were writing the only exams of our lives, but in reality, only one truly counted in the general sense. Our Constitutional Law exam was a 100% final exam; the other three exams are worth 20%, but that is only if we have a poorer showing on our final exams in April, and most professors report that it is rare that first year students ever use the midterm marks to boost final tallies. That aside, it occurred to us early on that investing in the hours of studying can only enhance our experience of school generally, and prepares us for the beginning of the new term. The classes are cumulative, so everything we took in the first semester is built upon in the second. Spending hours reviewing semester one material could only benefit us and I think it did. In the end, my marks will be what they are; what I gained was friendship and some fine study habits. Win-win.

That said, there were many others that didn’t bother to study at all for the exams that are worth very little. Some even came into the test room with only a pencil in their hands. The exams are open book tests, so all are allowed to bring all notes along, which is why most of us spend disproportionate amounts of time creating the tiniest and most succinct version of our notes possible. The tests are anonymous, and we are assigned a number, which is what we mark our tests with. At first, I was very unhappy with this process, and now I feel less worked up about it. This could be because I have simply assimilated and accepted the process of law school and its various anomalies. It also could be because I feel like I actually have a good chance of doing well, so the process becomes seemingly less monstrous. Once the grades are in, I could be singing a different tune, but I have to admit that I adored the challenge. I worked so hard and wrote good exams (meaning I didn’t panic or freeze up at all). I finished the semester feeling quite proud.

And now here it is, a week away from Christmas! Yesterday, Jeff, the girls and I decorated the house and put up the tree. We have been watching movies and sleeping in. It is utterly glorious to wake up in the morning and not have any reading to do, other than the newspaper, which I’ve neglected for months. All of us bought cross-country skis and are praying for snow. We are having a Winter Solstice party to celebrate the longest night of the year with some of our new friends in town. On Christmas day, we plan to spend the day in our pajamas, eating butter and drinking cream. It is such a lovely time of year and I am really enjoying how much I am enjoying it!

Of course, we miss our friends and family. I miss all of the normal social engagements that would make me out of my mind with bliss each day leading up to the New Year. But life is good in sweet Saskatoon, and no one is more surprised than me.