The first piece of advice that I got was to go into each of my first year classes on the first day with one thing in mind - the exam. All of my work should be geared to "acing" the exam. I should read prior exams/outlines before coming to class to get an idea of what the professor covered on exams (black letter law, policy, etc.) and focus only on learning these things.

-- CeciliaWang - 10 Feb 2010

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Hey David, I received very similar advices. I think all these advices are geared toward one thing, to get one step ahead of others on the 1L curve. We have very limited time, 14 weeks of classes, and yet we have tremendous amount of work. If you spend more time on what interests you the most, you will likely spend less time on what interests the professor the most. I think the real problem is that we are still adjusting to the “how to think like a lawyer” and this is why these advices are all based on the assumption that we cannot learn what the professor wants to teach us and pursue our own interests at the same time. The bottom line is that the professor writes the exam however he/she likes and grades the exams however he/she likes. I am actually very intrigued by what Professor Moglen said in class on Tuesday, just have no first year grades and give students more time to adjust. This way you don’t have to refrain from spending more time on topics that interest you. However, this will definitely create chaos for the employers during EIP. We just have to face the truth that the purpose of grades is probably more for the convenience of employers than for providing feedbacks to the students. Now transition to what really bothers me about law school is that professors do not have to provide mandatory feedbacks to the students. How are we supposed to improve if we don’t even know what we did wrong? How can we become better lawyers without knowing how to improve?