*Warning*

This will probably not be of any interest whatsoever to any readers who do not wish to become lawyers…. But feel free to read and then laugh about my misfortune that is being a part-time post-grad student at the College of Law.

I reckon that 90% of students would agree with me that the worst day of the exam period (besides the exam itself) is the day before… A few Friday’s ago I was off work with my head in a book hoping I wouldn’t lose the ability to remember to write my student I.D on the paper, let alone the ability to answer the actual questions. So, ONE day to go and my Mum made the announcement that our boiler had broken and therefore the heating will not be working. Great. No heating in fecking February... verdict? Freezing my bollocks off while trying to study.

The next part of the story is about me being left alone as my Mum and step-dad had buggered off to Birmingham for the weekend. So… there I was sitting at my desk wearing my *bright yellow Spongebob Squarepants* dressing gown in a failed effort to keep warm and this bloke opens my door without knocking…. “Oh ermmm sorry…. I thought this was another cupboard…” Yes. Suuuure you did mate.

            Finally the heat begins to come back through the radiators and Mr Boilerman can leave but the best part is that he left the entire contents of the airing cupboard on the landing floor… not just on the landing floor and put neatly like a normal person would do… but thrown everywhere… Arghhhh!!!

As a student I quickly came to the conclusion that I did not have 10 minutes to spare to place all these things back into the airing cupboard before my exams were over. I would rather spend 2 days climbing over everything and allow the cats to make camp on the sheets and towels for this period of time.

Oh and then later on the heating stopped working again. Back to square one!

Having an exam on a Saturday is to put it bluntly; rather shit. As my alarm blared out at 6am I couldn’t help but think “Jesus Christ… a law exam… on a Saturday? Surely I should be feeling mildly hung-over (or still drunk) at this time and day of the week? Not about to sit a law exam in four hours time.” Dammit.

Whilst wearing two dressing gowns and three pairs of socks I managed to squeeze in an hour of extra revision between 6 and 7am. I then got ready, climbed over the mountain of linen on the landing, walked out the door and was on the train to London by 8:02am.

The closer I got to Moorgate the more and more students I saw with mini suitcases for all their books... I on the other hand had with myself a rucksack and a shoulder bag; not sure if I looked like I was trying to be different or if I just looked like a retard? ;)

Relief swept over me when I opened the paper and found Corporation tax to be the first question. I missed a workshop on IHT (Inheritance tax) and decided against studying it for the exam… a decision that was highly likely to result in an “epic fail” if it came up.

I made a complete bulls up of the second from last question. Insolvency. I really like this area of law but was obviously ill-prepared. We were asked to calculate the dividend which would subsequently calculate how much money there was available to each creditor. I had a look at the balance sheet and the company had absolutely no money… I was obviously missing something because for the life of me I could not work out how there was any money for any of their creditors if the company had NO MONEY….. ARGHHHH!!! Stress… Panic… Breathe… Move on to next question and try not to worry about it.

By this point I could feel the heat from my forehead creating steam. It wasn’t a 2 and a half hour *here’s 6 questions but pick your best 3, put forward an awesome argument and anything goes* under-graduate paper but, *here’s 12 questions and you have 3 and a half hours to answer them ALL* post-graduate paper; jumping from an “argue well and anything goes” possibility to a “Shut up, that’s the answer… tough shit” position.

1.30pm: After the exam it would be fair to say that no-one was in much of a good mood. It was a case of… “How’d that go?” … “Erm… Okay I guess, you?” “Yeah good, thanks.” “Okay well see you tomorrow.” And off we all hopped back home as tomorrow was Sunday and we still had TWO more exams still to do…

I was missing an awesome Ice-Hockey match with Mark at Riverside AND a night out for one of my best friends, Joe’s birthday because of these 2 exams the following day; the authority for this situation? – Sods Law. I arrived home around 3pm and was in absolutely no mood to start studying straight away... so I met up with Joe and Terry and had some food with them at TGI’s… *nom nom nom*…

By the time I was ready to start studying it was 7pm. The exams were each an hour in length and were MCQs (multiple choice questions)… sounds easy… pah ha ha ha… you couldn’t be more wrong. They may be better described as “multiple c**t questions”. MCQs are basically cryptic bastards. I find the process of elimination to be the best technique… 9 times out of 10 you can knock 2 answers out of the 4 on the head. You are then left with 2 answers of which you pick one at random, sing “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe” and Bob’s your uncle… you have yourself an answer!

Ha ha…. I wish it was that easy.  

Sunday morning brought with it more fun. My train was not leaving from Pitsea and therefore I had to drive to Basildon and catch one from there. It wasn’t too much of a stress… just something extra to worry about.

I decided to use the time I had on the train to have a quick look over my business notes as the night before was spent completely on wills. Wills has some complex IHT calculations and therefore I would certainly require a calculator in the exam… So what do I go and do? FORGET my calculator! And then in typical lawyer fashion… blame my mistake on somebody/something elseJ. The train issue of course.

After a few frantic texts to other friends who were sitting the same exam I was lucky enough that one of them had a spare calculator. Pheeewwww!!

When I arrived at Moorgate Sarah informed me that Chris was still stuck on a platform in Stevenage (20 minutes before we were due to start our first exam). We were in conversation with the College trying to find out what would happen if he missed the exam. They said he would have acceptable mitigating circumstances and would re-sit in the summer… along with the 3.5 hour written exam we did the day before! Sarah was so gobsmacked that she had to sit down. We were all in shock and just hoped he got there soon enough to be able to finish the paper.

Thankfully he got there with 40 minutes to spare. 20 minutes less but hey… it’s a hell of a lot better than sitting the entire module again.

After the first exam we had about 45 minutes to kill before we had to be back in the same room for the next one. We decided Tea would be a good idea and headed to Costa Coffee. The only crisps they had were 95p per bag and I know its London but come on! For 95p they better be bloody good crisps!

When the exams finish and the adrenaline stops I don’t know why but this feeling of “utter shit” swept through my body. I went for a meal with the girls just outside Liverpool St; we drank some wine and had some giggles.

I arrived home at around 4pm with a full belly and a headache (just to remind me how drained I really felt). Oh and I forgot to mention earlier… all I had now to do for the rest of the evening was move house.

What a weekend.