The Exam

• Author: Ramsey All/Daniel Batista/Koker Christensen/Ian Cooper
• Pages: 99-120

The

EXAM

FTER

months

of

practice,

the big day

finally

arrives.

The

morning

of the

exam

finds

our

three protagonists

in

different

moods. Charlie wakes

up

feeling tired.

He had a

restless

night, tossing

and

turning

and

asking

why he

ever turned

his

back

on

Billieness.

He

wanders into

his

living room

and

stares

regretfully

at

the

empty pizza

box and

cans

of

beer adorning

his

coffee

table.

He

sees

his

panicky

and

guilty eyes

in the

mirror

and

worries that today

he

shall meet

his

comeuppance.

Billie,

for his

part,

had a

restful

sleep.

He

wakes

up at the

sched-

uled time

and

eats

his

usual meal

of

cereal, juice, half

a

banana,

and a

single

soft-boiled egg.

He

admiringly studies

his

half-bearded visage

in the

mirror.

He

flexes

his

writing hand

and

tells himself he's

got

nothing

to

worry about. "After all,"

he

says

to

himself,

"with

all the

blood I've spilt,

how can I

lose?"

Like

Billie, Andie wakes

up

feeling

good

about what

she has

done

up to

this point. Like Charlie,

she is not

convinced that this will

be

enough

to

guarantee

her a

good grade.

Unlike

either

of her

less

evolved counterparts, Andie realizes that

the

exam involves more

than simply playing

out the

events that have already been

set in

motion

to

their natural conclusion. Andie knows that

for the

coming

three hours

she

must continue

to do

what

she has

done

all

term:

implement

the

proper system. This

is the

primary

difference

between Andie

and the

other characters

on

exam day: Andie

is the

only

one who

believes that strategy

and

decision-making still matter.

The

mistake Billie

and

Charlie make

is the one

they have been

making

all

semester

long—they

do not

think strategically.

They

accept

the

conventional wisdom that exam

success

is

strictly

a

prod-

99

four

A

THE

ABCs

OF LAW

SCHOOL

uct

of

intelligence

and

hard work,

and

they

put

their

faith

(or

despair

in

Charlie's

case)

in

this

fact.

The

basis

for

this misunderstanding lies

in

their

view

of

what

a

law

school exam

is

really about.

For

Billie,

an

exam

is a

"test,"

in the

general sense.

It is a

challenge

to his

self-worth,

a

death struggle

in

which

his

detailed knowledge

of the

course material

is

pitted against

a

fact

pattern.

"When

you

walk into

the

exam

room,

aleajacta

est,

my

friend—the

die is

cast!

Your

grade

is now in the

hands

of

fate."

Taking

Law

School

EXAMS

For

Charlie,

a law

school exam

is a

"test"

in the

pejorative

sense

—

the

way

it is a

test when

his

girlfriend

asks

him to

forego

a

night

on the

couch watching

the

Star

Wars

tetralogy

for the

umpteenth time

to

attend

a

dinner party

with

her

friends.

Charlie

mistakenly views

both

this

request

and the

exam

as

cruel

and

arbitrary impositions that seek

to

destroy

his

happiness

to

prove some meaningless point.

Andie

differs

from

the

other

two

characters

in

that

she

does

not see

the

ultimate goal

of law

school exams

in

terms

of

proving

a

point.

Exams

do not

test intelligence.

Nor do

they test one's work ethic.

They

simply test

how

well

one

handles

the

course material from

within

the

perspective

of the

professor's preferred theory. According-

ly,

for

Andie,

a law

school exam

is a

vehicle through

which

to

com-

municate

to her

professor that

she

understands

his

view

of the

course.

Unsurprisingly,

the way

each character understands exams

in-

fluences how

each writes exams. Charlie's belief that

he

needs

to

defeat

the

exam

by the

application

of

knowledge causes

him to

take

a

fatalistic

approach.

He is

resigned

to a bad

grade,

as he

believes

it is

too

late

to do

anything about

it

(and

in a

sense

it is,

though there

are

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