freakin out

i'm not feeling real great about tomrrow's exam. i have had a terrible time trying to stay focused on studying, and there is just so much detail that i really worry about being able to pull together what the prof is looking for. i certainly have not lived up to his lofty standard of virtual enslavement to law school, and i have a sinking feeling that this test is designed to expose precisely that. shouldn't be too tough to do that to me early tomorrow morning. we'll see. i'm fine with here are the facts, this is the law, how should things shake down, but i'm not so good on here are the facts, tell me about three different jurisdictions' positions on this particular crime and the model penal code provision chapter and verse, tell me how it will shake down in each, and then tell me which one is the best and why. i can do all that except busing out word for word statutes. there's a hell of a lot of those things out there. laws change all the time, and lawyers presumably look up plenty of shit every time the write a brief or whatever. so i really don't see how expecting people to regurgitate snippets of law is an enterprise which actually teaches people about the law write large or how to be a better lawyer. cases are not won or lost based on memorization skills as far as i am aware. all that being said, memorization has been a strong point for me, and if this were an ordinary format test with fill in the blank, short answer and the like, i would feel differently. but it is gonna be more along the lines of three big ass essays, which kind of changes the dynamic. the tension is between focusing on the bigger picture and getting down and dirty in the details, because one particular word in one applicable statute can mean the difference between an acquittal and a death sentence. no one is going to kill me based on how i perform on the exam, but the prospect is still pretty daunting. daunting enough that i am typing this up rather than attempting to engage the material. at this point i have two dead reference books on top of my criminal law text, so i should probably get back to it for a while.