Your correspondent, drunk on eggnog, reflects on her Contracts exam.

(Secret to tasty eggnog: shake it with whatever liquor you're mixing it with. Presidente Mexican brandy is best. And add some nutmeg...)

Hm. So, having taken my Contracts exam this afternoon (before going out for beer with the youth and having a little eggnog at home), I have the following thoughts:

• My need for latency time may be a serious problem on law school exams. I'm not sure if I have this problem to any greater extent than anyone else, but it quite simply takes me a while to ruminate on things and figure them out. This doesn't bear much relation to whether I've memorized the doctrine and have the facts at my fingertips or not--it simply takes me a while to think through the facts and all the different ways you could argue them. I don't really know how to handle this on future exams. I may try to bomb through the answers faster, then take a walk and reflect.
• It would definitely be better to outline earlier and take a break the day before the exam. I didn't actually outline for this one--just spent some serious "quality time" with the Uniform Commercial Code (keep wanting to call it the Universal Commercial Code, like maybe it applies on Star Trek too...) and the Restatement of Contracts yesterday. I think that was fine, but I think it left me thinking a little *too* much about issue-spotting and rule-matching, and not enough about being a weaselly attorney and wrangling with the facts. I was too much, "Ah, x fulfills this clause of the code, therefore y" and not enough "one could characterize x broadly or narrowly depending on whether one wanted to argue y or z."
• Do you think drinking *during* the exam would help? Like maybe drafting the answers, then taking a shot and revisiting them?

We'll see how I do. I imagine these problems are not unusual, so they may not be a problem as far as grades are concerned, but you know there's *someone* out there who can do this stuff on a dime.

Practice exams might help, but not the day before. Over the course of the quarter, maybe.