1. Why do people get there so early? The other day, I had an exam at 8:30 in the morning. I left my apartment at ten till 8, and by 8:05, I was walking into the building, kicking myself for leaving too early. I went into the exam room, and the place was nearly full. From the looks of things, I was one of the last ones there. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people had been there since 7:00. Why were they there so early? It wasn’t the Criminal Procedure exam/Line for Death Cab tickets. Getting to your seat early doesn’t ensure a better grade. If it did, there'd be a guy in sunglasses standing outside saying, "A's. I need two A's. Front row, right by the proctor."
2. Why do people wear earplugs? The exam started, and I looked around the room to see half of the people in there wearing earplugs. Why? It isn’t as if a construction crew was in the adjacent room, tearing down the walls with a sledgehammer. The exam wasn’t being administered in a kennel. There wasn’t a large Italian man asleep the chair next to you, vibrating the room with his snores. At worst, the room is filled with the quiet, almost soothing clacking of keyboards. I have to think that any benefit received from slightly muffling the sounds around you would be offset by the annoyance of having a malleable plastic compound jammed in your ear canal.
3. Why does anyone handwrite their exam? This is one thing I’ve never understood. Why do people shun a technological advancement that is, without a doubt, a marked improvement over the alternative. They don’t do this in other walks of life. No one rode a horse to school that morning. Nobody went outside and pissed into a hole in the ground when they took a bathroom break. No one cooked a can of beans over a fire for breakfast. So why not just use your laptop and type the exam? My hand is sore after writing out four checks in a row to pay my monthly bills. People must be in agony after writing out five essays. Perhaps they cannot fully feel that they earned their grade unless they experienced some physical agony to achieve it. The rest of us are fully satisfied with the mental agony of law school. That should be enough for them too.
