Oh dear… somebody hasn't been blogging for a while. I am sure any students out there know how busy December is for us all *tiny violins* and I have also been training for my first half marathon so unfortunately, with all the best will in the world, the blog did indeed fall by the wayside.
But no more! I hope to be back and blogging from this point onwards. Obviously with only six months remaining of the LPC it would be a shame not to see it through to the end so I am 100% back.
So let us begin with a round up…
Civil Litigation and Property mock exams
November not only held my birthday but mock exams. The mock exams were held just one week after my advocacy practice assessment, on a Wednesday and during what would have been our workshops for that module. I am not going to lie, my preparation for the mocks this year fell far below the standard I set for myself for the BLP mock one year previous. For BLP I had prepared crib sheets for all the workshops we had done prior to the mock and was serious about my revision.
For the civ lit and property mocks no such crib sheets were prepared. And revision was minimal. To be honest it was a general theme! Having had no actual time off from the course to revise it just seemed impossible to be as ready as we all would have liked.
We sat the exams and from the mark sheets I think most of us were confident we had at least passed which was the main thing. The course continued and mocks were swiftly forgotten.
Advocacy Assessment
The real advocacy assessment was held on the final day of term, the 18th December, and was the only thing we had that day. In addition to this we were also informed that our mock exam papers would be ready for collection after we had done our assessments. Hoorah…
My assessment was at 15:15 which, given how far away I live, suited me just fine. I turned up an hour early looking my best and feeling ridiculously calm! The practice assessment had gone smoothly and I thought that ten minutes of talking for an exam was going to be a breeze. After a quick run through in one of the quiet rooms I felt ready and made my way to student services to find out my room allocation (we were told to arrive at student services fifteen minutes prior to the assessment to collect this).
Student services was filled with around twenty nervous looking students all lined up to collect their numbers. My stomach dropped and I finally felt the first twinges of nerves. I collected my number and found my room. My opponent was waiting outside and I promptly took down her name while she babbled about how nervous she was. Why is it that nerves are contagious? My stomach dropped for the second time.
In the advocacy literature we are told that: once you enter the exam room you are in "court room conditions" and the assessment has begun. This effectively means, don't go chatting to the assessor like they are your best pal, they are assessing you from the start. So imagine our surprise when our assessor invited us in and begun talking to us, telling us what she would be doing, where she wanted us to sit, told us of time limits and warnings. I was utterly thrown. My stomach dropped for the third time. And then it began.
I introduced myself and my partner perfectly fine. I went to take a breath to begin the case introductions and it hitched in my throat. The nerves had hit full and fast and I suddenly wondered if I would even be able to talk again. I am sure this has happened to almost everyone and for that reason you will all know that, yes, you do talk again. The first two minutes were touch and go, I felt awful! But I regained my stride and composure and by the time I was taking the "judge" through the bundle my voice had returned some confidence and my breathing had relaxed. I finished without a time warning and the adrenaline buzz of finishing felt amazing!
My partner began her submissions and I hate to say it but she really struggled. I hated having to sit and listen to her and realised how she had probably felt during the first part of mine. Unfortunately, she did receive a time warning and then committed the cardinal sin of abandoning her bundle right where she was and going straight to her concluding submissions. When you receive a time warning you have exceeded the ten allotted minutes for your submissions but will generally be allowed a further two before you are completely cut off. This should allow you to (quickly) finish the bundle and then conclude. Abandoning the bundle, at any point, is a terrible terrible idea.
The time warning put her off completely and her conclusions were shaky at best. I managed to make a further point and then the judge decided that my partner had "won". This time I managed to respond to costs and I "won" that element of the hearing.
We quickly left - having finished much earlier than the other students. As we left the building we whispered how we thought it might have gone and my opponent agreed that I had been nervous, in fact she had seen me shaking! The relief of having completed one of my most dreaded assessments on the LPC was immense. Although it could have gone better I was so pleased with myself.
The day ended on a high with a too-fancy-for-students Christmas meal at a lovely steak restaurant. Our suits came in handy! Generally, my classmates felt passes were on the cards but none of us thought it had gone perfectly. The nature of assessments.
Oh and in terms of mock results…
CIVIL LITIGATION : 58%
PROPERTY: 74%
Lots of work to do for civil then!
Christmas was the perfect break. Obviously, jobs continued but having a few weeks away from uni left me feeling revitalised for the final push of 2014 and the finish of the LPC.
I hope you all had a good one.
