by Amy Kerschner
On day two of the Pasadena Baby Bar Boot Camp, the mentor team spent what mental energy we had to spare after day one brainstorming curve balls we could throw at our students in an effort to prepare them for any contingency. We believe in over-preparedness for this (or any) exam, and sometimes you just can't count on everything going smoothly.
We reluctantly decided an emergency earthquake drill was taking "over-preparation" a little bit too far.
Instead, we decided to do a fake power failure. That's right. We informed the students that their computers had just died, and they had to handwrite the entire last essay (a beautiful common law contracts hypothetical).
The students appeared to handle that curve very well! We did not review those essays for legal analysis like we did the first three essays they emailed us, but we did cover formatting and approaches specifically for handwriting an essay. The class really absorbed the experience and we feel pretty confident that if a student's computer fails, they willl know how to handle it.
We have seventeen students working diligently to apply the advice we are able to give them to boost their MBE scores or make their essays just a little bit better. Some of the questions we are fielding are black letter law issues, but there are also some questions that provide some amusement: "what should I eat for breakfast the morning of the exam?" or "are the proctors going to be reading my essay while I'm typing it, like you guys?" or (my personal favorite) "do I get bonus points for using the word 'inconceivable' in my negligence analysis?"
Please keep these students in your prayers. They are working very hard, and we, as mentors, are working hard as well to use the time we have left as effectively as possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment