UN-stressed?

Today I find myself decidedly un-stressed, oddly enough. Maybe it's just the calm before the storm, who knows? At any rate, today I'm feeling great. I drove up to school today for the first time in a week, just to make sure that my exam-taking software was working (as far as I can tell, it is, and I've downloaded all my documents already). Since I was already there, I worked out, then drove home. On the way home, C called so I drove down to pick him up for work and we ate lunch together. 

Now that I'm at home, I just finished taking a Contracts practice essay, which went pretty well (as long as we don't have to write an essay on UCC 2-207, which we probably will not). I will do another practice essay tonight, and another tomorrow, but I feel pretty good! I think I have everything memorized that I can memorize, and I have most of the concepts down cold. Tomorrow I'll go through the E&E book to spot-check some of the more complex topics, but for the most part, I have it down. Contracts is my least-comfortable topic, too, so maybe that's why I'm feeling calm. 

I think that after Wednesday, the entire finals process will be downhill. The first one will be the most stressful (because we've never done it before and it's hard to know what to expect), but after that, the time will fly by. 

I've come to peace with the fact that we are graded on a curve, and thus that my grade will be STRONGLY influenced by how everyone else performs. My philosophy is that if I perform better than at least half the class (which I think I can do), then I'll end up with some flavor of a B (for law school, that's a good thing). I figure the curve distribution (and not how fiercely I study) will determine who in the class receives the few A's, so there's no point in trying to stress or muscle my way up to that grade, since there's no way to guarantee that you'll be at the top. If I get a solid distribution of B's and B+'s on my finals, I will be happy (also, I think that will be sufficient to keep my scholarship). Obviously, I would prefer to have A's, but there is no logical reason for me to be fixating on that grade, since there is really nothing more in my power to do to ensure that I receive one. Now, it's all up to the curve... and which topics our prof picks. 

The nicest thing is that we've only had one semester of law school - thus the topics we can be tested on are pretty narrow and straight-forward (except in Property because we sprinted through the entire book, so anything is fair game). Plus, Property isn't until the 18th. So there's still time.

Until then, I remain in my bubble of Zen calm, which hopefully will last until the end of next week. I'll write again to post-mortem my first law school exam!

K