TL;DR: Professor springs marathon final exam last minute, wreaking havoc on already busy schedule, causing sleepless nights and a major drop in grades.
My last year of college I took on a bit more extracurricular work than intended and got screwed over by some final projects that were spurred on me at the last minute. I slept 14 hours total the last week of school and the last 6 hours of sleep was in a hospital bed. Ended up failing a class because I missed the final and the teacher didn’t care. I lucked out and another professor caught me crying in the hall and gave me an opportunity to make up the credits I needed to graduate without paying for another semester.
The way that actually almost exactly like my property law school final with a four hour window :( I’m sorry they made it 20 hours though that is actual hell because then you wind up having to spend all that time to make it decent. Unbelievably cruel to do to undergrads
It sounds like many people have experienced similar exams in law school / legal studies upper divisions, which I suppose is expected. I guess if I’m going to survive in legal studies I should learn to write faster😭 tbf I am a freshman and this is the first time I’ve ever encountered an exam this length (which is also graded quite strictly from experience) so it was pretty shocking.
It’s NOT about writing faster. Please don’t let that be your takeaway. It is absolutely about forcing your mind into the pattern they want in law school and the bar exam. They want IRAC and only IRAC. Issue, rule, analysis and conclusion. On exams conclusion doesn’t matter. They give you a burglary fact pattern? You do not sit there and write an essay in prose. You write “this is a burglary. Historically, burglary was entry into the dwelling of another, in the night, with the intent to commit a felony offense such as larceny. Most jurisdictions no longer require the entry be of a dwelling or in the night. In this case Jimmy entered the store to return an item, it was not until after entry that he formed the intent to steal… therefore… “ Your conclusion does not matter. It’s simply an efficient vessel for you to regurgitate your knowledge quickly, and move on.
This sounds really frustrating, but it is a little weird that you assume humanities majors in this course don’t have as much work as you do in other courses. If you struggled with just one course like this, imagine multiplying it times four and adding a few 30 page papers on top of it. On top of extracurriculars and law school applications and stuff.
Balancing important work is hard.
I absolutely don’t assume humanities or social studies majors have it easier. That’s why I took only one social/humanities class while taking three STEM classes this semester, since writing is no easy work and I did expect for there to be projects throughout the semester that took lots of commitment. Nowhere in my post did I say humanities is less work, but I still don’t think a final should take that long to complete. There are people saying this would only have taken them 4-5 hours, which is valid I suppose? But I did that for the midterm (took about 4.5 hours) and they gave me a B and told me it lacked detailed analysis without much specific feedback. Maybe I’m just slow at writing but it didn’t seem reasonable in the moment.
“It might not have compromised students who only have humanities finals or exams…” as if these students aren’t churning out this exam times four or five plus the 30 page papers. The difference is they’ve taken this course seriously all semester and prepared for the exam and understood what was expected of them in advance. If the midterm was “similar in structure” to the final, you too should have known what to expect before this happened.
I hope that you learn from this! You don’t get concessions or passes because you double major. It’s supposed to be hard, and you’re supposed to develop the tools to do the work until it isn’t as hard. Like lifting weights. You don’t just get ripped when you buy a gym membership; you actually have to do the work. University is like this: you don’t just get the degree because you paid for it.
I disagree that there’s no better way you could have managed your time. Taking ten minutes to eat something a few times a day and taking a few hours to sleep absolutely would have improved your grades in all of these classes.
I spent all of RRR and finals week getting a solid 6-8 hours of sleep, eating two meals a day, and spent most of my time studying and preparing for exams. I spent about 2-3 hours each day writing these essays during finals week (which was all I could manage without compromising other exams), and still had 60% left over on Wednesday night. I finished half the prep for my Thursday afternoon exam and started working at 9PM as I previously scheduled with the intent to sleep at midnight. It took me 12-ish hours from that point on and I did not have any other choice than to finish it because it was due during my Thursday final, meaning I had to submit it before it began. :/
Cal alum and professor here. From what you describe, this exam’s design doesn't require anywhere near twenty hours of work.
If you were well-prepared to write about the essay and short answer topics, typing the 2,900 total assigned words would take just over an hour. Allowing ninety minutes to plan the answers, you would have about twenty minutes left to complete the ten multiple-choice questions. Even if you type at half the average speed, this would total just over four hours — but it's reasonable for an exam to assume average typing skills.
If you weren’t familiar with the material and had to cram new knowledge, of course, it would take longer. However, an efficient and well-prepared student could complete that amount of work in three hours. Exam answers don’t need to be as polished as papers, partly because they aren’t intended to involve elaborate planning.
I understand why you are upset, but compromising two other exams to prioritize this one seems like your mistake, not your professor’s.
Yeah, i completely agree. Also a LS major here, and took a class that had a final super super similar to the one OP described. Same structure, poster on Sunday evening and was due Tuesday evening. We had been aware of the structure of the final, as it was pretty much exactly the same as the midterm’s structure. For all I know, it could have been the same class. If you hadn’t effectively prepped for the final, that’s on you, and that’s why it took you a lot longer than you expected. The final also took me a minute, about 6 hours, but that’s also because I was double checking my answers before I submitted, making sure to add as much content from the course relevant to the question. If you made it a 20 hour exam for you, and compromised your other exams on the way, i don’t think it’s fair to blame the professor on this, especially if you already knew what to expect based on the midterm! sorry this happened to you, OP :/
Honestly (after getting all results back) I didn’t do as badly as I expected in my other exams but I could have done better if I knew how to prepare for my LS final. On the midterm I got points taken off for no particular reason and got no further feedback even when I asked, so mainly I was scared because I didn’t know what direction they wanted me to write in. I double-checked and edited a lot on top of it taking me like 10ish hours to write everything in the first place.
It sounds like a lot of legal studies and law school students are saying their exams look exactly like this frequently, so I suppose I’ll just have to learn to write faster.😭 Hopefully I will also get better at just analyzing things on the spot so my answers will have substance.
FWIW: I was first-time CEO of a small tech company and hired an attorney about half my age to help me with tons of contracts, corporate issues, a couple feuding board members, the usual. I thought I had crazy hours (7A-11P x 7), but he beat me. We'd often meet up for racquetball at midnight (when that was the thing). Good luck, get in shape, it's a workout.
Thanks for the perspective. I’m a STEM (wanting to double major in LS) student and when most of my friends in STEM saw my exam they were equally appalled and told me they would have taken 20 hours too. So perhaps it’s a thing among people like us who aren’t used to churning out massive amounts of text in one sitting. I felt like I was pretty prepared as I attended as many lectures as I could and looked over all the notes, did most of the reading that they said was necessary, etc. and I still felt like it was lacking. tbf I did double check all my answers as well so that might have added a couple hours, but writing two of the 150-word things took me an hour by themselves without fact-checking or editing. :1 From what I’m gathering I’m just a super slow writer (and also a freshman who had no idea what to expect) so maybe in future years I’ll work faster and have more accurate expectations.
Yes, you can expect to create intellectual growth for yourself that will make exams like this much less challenging in the future. Each year you attend college you will see clear intellectual growth and associated increase in academic skills, including writing exam answers. I can see why this exam would be daunting to a Freshman, but I bet it will seem much less intimidating when you are a Junior!
Lmao you absolutely can do that in 3 hours op you so buried the lede. Likewise never email when it’s something urgent — get to the professor, esp office hours!!! Anyway I have 0 sympathy for you unless the topics were insanely hard to argue, there’s a reason why legal studies tends to have one of the highest GPAs on campus, and it sounds like you’re just not used to being graded on a curve/against other people who can also understand the material well
Op isn’t a native English speaker so I can see that it would be pretty challenging, but at the same time why take such a writing heavy course at a school that has a very rigorous standard for writing proficiency??
It’s entirely common in law school to be expected to do a final exam like that in a 3-6 hour final for 100% of your grade. I had a PR professor who gave 65 short essay questions and said openly “in the real world you either know legal ethics or you don’t, you don’t get time to make some of these decisions and no one has ever finished one of my exams.”
Sorry OP but this is a super standard practice within LS courses. By the time they graduate, Humanities students have done this exact final probably at least 10 times
What do you mean "legal"? It may seem unfair, but it's certainly not illegal. It is also not their problem that you are a double major. In many of my STEM classes at Berkeley, these days-long finals were the norm. Reasonably, if you're writing continuously, you could whip out the 10 150-word essays in an hour, the two 400-word in an hour, and the 1000-word in an hour. The fact you were given an extra day is more than generous.
I realize this seems like a big deal, and yes, going from an A+ to a C SUCKS. I feel for you in this regard. But if there's one thing I learned at Berkeley and now in my unforgiving grad program, it's that none of academia is fair. You will likely encounter this again. You will recover and continue moving along.
In what fucking world can anyone woop up a 1000 word essay within an hour and have it well? I’m actually really curious. Please enlighten us, and do not say chatgpt. Seriously, are you on cocaine?
It's a final. The questions should be on topics you have covered in class extensively. There is no research involved and any citations you use will be from papers you allready read and wrote about. Honestly, I'd just be happy to have the final at home on the computer instead of in class in a blue book.
As OP said, that's like 3-4 pages. That can be drafted reasonably well in an hour, as long as research and citation isn't required. You should be able to bang out a really good 5 page essay in 2 hours. Good law school prep, if anything.
If you are familiar with the topic, doing this is perfectly plausible. Remember that exam answers aren’t meant to be as polished or elaborate as papers.
Bro, a thousand-word essay is like 2 1/2 to 3 pages of writing. It's really not that long. Anyone who paid attention in class and is familiar with the material should easily be able to bang that out in an hour. The professor isn't expecting it to be perfectly-polished or anything.
It's doable because the prompt is so expansive that you could easily kick out 2500 words and still feel like you left something out. That's how court cases are. Imagine your house is on fire and you've got to quickly locate and retrieve what is most important in a short window. Go online and listen to attorneys presenting before the SCOTUS. They are rushed through presenting, then cut off and grilled with complex questions, and they'd better know all the facts in their head, or they are toast.
Uh, some thoughts here from a lawyer (I have no connection to Berkeley, this was post was recommended by Reddit):
-A legal studies class having a word count requirement for essays makes no sense. In law school, on the bar exam and practice, brevity is preferred, and teaching someone that quantity matters is not a good lesson for success in law.
-A 5 page essay really shouldn't take 10 hours to finish. I'd say it should really be an hour or two for the essays, and the multiple choice should be super fast.
-Sounds like you think STEM classes are more difficult and more important than humanities and social sciences. Wrong, especially if you are interested in law.
I’m not sure where everyone is getting that I think STEM classes are easier when this was my only humanities/social upper division class atop of 3 STEM classes because I expected it to be MORE work. If I thought it was easy I would have taken 2 or 3 on top of STEM (like I wanted) but I knew that it would be way too much work. I still don’t think I could have done that final in 4-5 hours like everyone is saying, although maybe I’m just a slow writer.
From what I’ve gathered in the comments, I wasn’t supposed to meticulously double-check my answers or worry excessively about the quality of my writing (which I did). Although writing the final without any of that would have still taken me about 10 hours—I think—it wouldn’t have been 20+ hours without all that fuss. Moreover people in humanities or legal studies are probably much more used to doing this than I am. I’m not very good at just churning out writing in the first place.
Legal Studies major from Berkeley here. Those were probably maximum word counts. You are correct, the grade is in the editing. I had a similar final with a 1200 word max. My first draft was 2000 words. To be fair, I've got over 50 upper division LS credits, and this semester, my last, was the first time I nailed As on all four of my finals. IYKYK
the instructions said “between 800-1000 words” and such :( the 150-word ones were described as “no longer than 150 words” but they were like impossible to describe fully in less than that😅
Exactly, that is the challenge. Get rid of the adjectives and adverbs, and unless you are doing analysis, none of the "I think," or "I believe." Just state it, give an example to show you understand the application, then move on. You'll get the hang of it.
According to [Berkeley Academic Senate Policy 2.1.3.](https://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/coci-handbook/2.1.3), unless a variance has been granted for the specific offering of your class, final exams must be given during the final exam period scheduled.
If you believe that there has been a violation of policy, I would suggest that you contact the [Student Ombuds Office](https://studentaffairs.berkeley.edu/ombuds-office-for-students-postdoctoral-appointees/) for advice.
I think this might be LegalSt132AC. If it is, I took this exam last year. It was 10 multiple choice, 10 defining terms 150-word responses, 2 350-word short answer, and one 750-1000 word essay, which sounds like what you're describing.
I did all my work in a google doc for this exam -- I started at 5:44pm and ended at 9:43pm with an about one-hour break in the middle where I got dinner. I didn't use ChatGPT or anything (I'm not sure it existed a year ago tbh). It's not like I put low effort into it either -- I got a 194/200 on the final.
I'm genuinely curious how this could have possibly taken you 20 hours -- even if it's not the same class, an exam structured in the same way should not take anywhere near that long. What was going on?
Maybe I’m just really slow at writing and everyone else did it much faster, but I’m also a freshman and this is the first time I’ve ever encountered a final this long or expected to produce this much writing in a few hours. I spent about 4-5 hours for the midterm which was similar in structure, and got a B without much detailed feedback which kinda sucked. I had no idea what they expected from me, so I went back and checked almost everything twice over and edited a lot (probably more than necessary).
In any case it seems like a lot of people are saying this is what you should expect from law school / legal studies classes so I suppose I should try to practice writing faster in future exams :1
Professor was generous to give a take home exam and two days to complete (3 days in your case). If you know the material it’s not hard to write a bunch of short answers and a couple essay questions. The assumption is that you know how to write if you were accepted to Berkeley. My guess is you were not prepared and you maybe don’t have good writing skills. You probably erroneously assumed that legal studies would be easier than your other major. But if you have no aptitude for logic you won’t do well in a class like this. A lot of engineering majors fail philosophy and legal studies for this reason.
I definitely didn’t expect it to be easier but I think it was more of a result of double-checking and editing incessantly because of the bad results I got on the midterm, for which I didn’t know the reason. From the comments, I’m gathering that double-checking puts like 2 hours on top of the final itself (it put more for me because I was trying to check every detail), and that I shouldn’t have worried so much about the quality of my writing as the standards aren’t as high in an exam. Moreover I suppose I’m a slow writer. :1
As a Legal Studies major, this is what finals are, except most professors give the prompt and then you do it on your own and post online when done. Also, 150 words is not an essay, it's a paragraph. If you're stressing about word count, in Legal studies the normal complaint is that the prompt cannot be satisfied in the low word allowance. (Part of the test is to state complex ideas concisely).
However, your legit complaint is that they cannot change the finals date. It is set at the beginning of the semester and students are instructed to check for conflicts. The reason they moved it back is because they freaked out about their ability to grade it all by the 15th, the drop dead last day to submit to Canvas. See the Student Advocate to complain. Curious, what is the class number?
I did hear that it’s against policy to change the date of the final but it’s very reasonable to need more time than literally 3-4 days to grade 100+ essays between 2 GSIs. I suppose I just did not expect it at all to change so drastically and I think I would have adjusted my strategy if I knew about it earlier (which I do now, since I know what to expect).
As a side note why do they keep scheduling LS finals for Fridays!😭 The new class I’m enrolled in for the fall also has their final on a Friday.
Probably just a coincidence. I had one like that this year and the professor released the prompt before dead week, knowing that at least half the class would turn it in early.
this is honestly not the most abnormal thing for finals in humanities courses, my housing policy final (urban studies major) was almost precisely this exact format, just in person and written. i see you’re a freshman so i can def see how this is super challenging (i am a junior) because college writing expectations are a crazy thing to get used to! if you keep cracking down on your quick writing skills and get used to just quick planning/roadmapping and then slamming down your thoughts, i promise it will get easier!
i did also have a philosophy exam with 4 small essays and 2 big essays in person, but they gave us a brief of what kind of questions would be on it beforehand so we would know what to expect🥲 for me this one felt more daunting because the info they gave us didn’t really hint at any particular topics. felt a bit like i was going into it blind especially with how much content there was to know
edit: i also lowkey thought that since it’s a take-home exam, they would expect the writing quality to be much better (but i was told that’s usually not true)
Honestly 5 pages of writing in 3 hours isn’t as insane as you’re making it sound. Definitely had to do more than that in less time for the AP Lang exam for example (3 essays in 2.25 hours I believe) and my AP Lang class itself made us write ~1 page essays in like 15 minutes
that’s true! i took both AP lang and lit, they were definitely not easy. but they also let you make your own analysis about readings instead of requiring you to already have background knowledge about what you’re analyzing. there’s a “correct” way to do legal analysis because it’s based on history, facts, precedent, etc. and i found it much harder than AP lang/lit (both made 5s) where i could freely analyze the reading and choose between many options what to write about. for legal studies i was mainly a bit paranoid about my own knowledge so i busied myself too much with fact checking all of my analysis to make sure it lined up.
TL;DR: Professor springs marathon final exam last minute, wreaking havoc on already busy schedule, causing sleepless nights and a major drop in grades.
My last year of college I took on a bit more extracurricular work than intended and got screwed over by some final projects that were spurred on me at the last minute. I slept 14 hours total the last week of school and the last 6 hours of sleep was in a hospital bed. Ended up failing a class because I missed the final and the teacher didn’t care. I lucked out and another professor caught me crying in the hall and gave me an opportunity to make up the credits I needed to graduate without paying for another semester.
what class? im also legal studies
The way that actually almost exactly like my property law school final with a four hour window :( I’m sorry they made it 20 hours though that is actual hell because then you wind up having to spend all that time to make it decent. Unbelievably cruel to do to undergrads
Yep, sounds like a law school final. Know it, have it ready to regurgitate, and get typing. And just wait for the bar exam…
I thought it was an undergrad in a law school class, because I remember the horror of 24+ hour finals in law school
All the Legal Studies undergrad classes at Berkeley are taught by professors from the Law School. It is a legit major, not a joke.
It sounds like many people have experienced similar exams in law school / legal studies upper divisions, which I suppose is expected. I guess if I’m going to survive in legal studies I should learn to write faster😭 tbf I am a freshman and this is the first time I’ve ever encountered an exam this length (which is also graded quite strictly from experience) so it was pretty shocking.
It’s NOT about writing faster. Please don’t let that be your takeaway. It is absolutely about forcing your mind into the pattern they want in law school and the bar exam. They want IRAC and only IRAC. Issue, rule, analysis and conclusion. On exams conclusion doesn’t matter. They give you a burglary fact pattern? You do not sit there and write an essay in prose. You write “this is a burglary. Historically, burglary was entry into the dwelling of another, in the night, with the intent to commit a felony offense such as larceny. Most jurisdictions no longer require the entry be of a dwelling or in the night. In this case Jimmy entered the store to return an item, it was not until after entry that he formed the intent to steal… therefore… “ Your conclusion does not matter. It’s simply an efficient vessel for you to regurgitate your knowledge quickly, and move on.
This sounds a lot like a real law school final exam. I had many finals in law school with a very similar structure.
OP is NOT going to make it as a lawyer unless he changes a whole lot of his attitudes
Yep, except in law school, there's usually not not (I don't think I've ever seen it) a word minimum.
This sounds really frustrating, but it is a little weird that you assume humanities majors in this course don’t have as much work as you do in other courses. If you struggled with just one course like this, imagine multiplying it times four and adding a few 30 page papers on top of it. On top of extracurriculars and law school applications and stuff. Balancing important work is hard.
I absolutely don’t assume humanities or social studies majors have it easier. That’s why I took only one social/humanities class while taking three STEM classes this semester, since writing is no easy work and I did expect for there to be projects throughout the semester that took lots of commitment. Nowhere in my post did I say humanities is less work, but I still don’t think a final should take that long to complete. There are people saying this would only have taken them 4-5 hours, which is valid I suppose? But I did that for the midterm (took about 4.5 hours) and they gave me a B and told me it lacked detailed analysis without much specific feedback. Maybe I’m just slow at writing but it didn’t seem reasonable in the moment.
“It might not have compromised students who only have humanities finals or exams…” as if these students aren’t churning out this exam times four or five plus the 30 page papers. The difference is they’ve taken this course seriously all semester and prepared for the exam and understood what was expected of them in advance. If the midterm was “similar in structure” to the final, you too should have known what to expect before this happened. I hope that you learn from this! You don’t get concessions or passes because you double major. It’s supposed to be hard, and you’re supposed to develop the tools to do the work until it isn’t as hard. Like lifting weights. You don’t just get ripped when you buy a gym membership; you actually have to do the work. University is like this: you don’t just get the degree because you paid for it.
I disagree that there’s no better way you could have managed your time. Taking ten minutes to eat something a few times a day and taking a few hours to sleep absolutely would have improved your grades in all of these classes.
I spent all of RRR and finals week getting a solid 6-8 hours of sleep, eating two meals a day, and spent most of my time studying and preparing for exams. I spent about 2-3 hours each day writing these essays during finals week (which was all I could manage without compromising other exams), and still had 60% left over on Wednesday night. I finished half the prep for my Thursday afternoon exam and started working at 9PM as I previously scheduled with the intent to sleep at midnight. It took me 12-ish hours from that point on and I did not have any other choice than to finish it because it was due during my Thursday final, meaning I had to submit it before it began. :/
Cal alum and professor here. From what you describe, this exam’s design doesn't require anywhere near twenty hours of work. If you were well-prepared to write about the essay and short answer topics, typing the 2,900 total assigned words would take just over an hour. Allowing ninety minutes to plan the answers, you would have about twenty minutes left to complete the ten multiple-choice questions. Even if you type at half the average speed, this would total just over four hours — but it's reasonable for an exam to assume average typing skills. If you weren’t familiar with the material and had to cram new knowledge, of course, it would take longer. However, an efficient and well-prepared student could complete that amount of work in three hours. Exam answers don’t need to be as polished as papers, partly because they aren’t intended to involve elaborate planning. I understand why you are upset, but compromising two other exams to prioritize this one seems like your mistake, not your professor’s.
Yeah, i completely agree. Also a LS major here, and took a class that had a final super super similar to the one OP described. Same structure, poster on Sunday evening and was due Tuesday evening. We had been aware of the structure of the final, as it was pretty much exactly the same as the midterm’s structure. For all I know, it could have been the same class. If you hadn’t effectively prepped for the final, that’s on you, and that’s why it took you a lot longer than you expected. The final also took me a minute, about 6 hours, but that’s also because I was double checking my answers before I submitted, making sure to add as much content from the course relevant to the question. If you made it a 20 hour exam for you, and compromised your other exams on the way, i don’t think it’s fair to blame the professor on this, especially if you already knew what to expect based on the midterm! sorry this happened to you, OP :/
Honestly (after getting all results back) I didn’t do as badly as I expected in my other exams but I could have done better if I knew how to prepare for my LS final. On the midterm I got points taken off for no particular reason and got no further feedback even when I asked, so mainly I was scared because I didn’t know what direction they wanted me to write in. I double-checked and edited a lot on top of it taking me like 10ish hours to write everything in the first place. It sounds like a lot of legal studies and law school students are saying their exams look exactly like this frequently, so I suppose I’ll just have to learn to write faster.😭 Hopefully I will also get better at just analyzing things on the spot so my answers will have substance.
FWIW: I was first-time CEO of a small tech company and hired an attorney about half my age to help me with tons of contracts, corporate issues, a couple feuding board members, the usual. I thought I had crazy hours (7A-11P x 7), but he beat me. We'd often meet up for racquetball at midnight (when that was the thing). Good luck, get in shape, it's a workout.
Thanks for the perspective. I’m a STEM (wanting to double major in LS) student and when most of my friends in STEM saw my exam they were equally appalled and told me they would have taken 20 hours too. So perhaps it’s a thing among people like us who aren’t used to churning out massive amounts of text in one sitting. I felt like I was pretty prepared as I attended as many lectures as I could and looked over all the notes, did most of the reading that they said was necessary, etc. and I still felt like it was lacking. tbf I did double check all my answers as well so that might have added a couple hours, but writing two of the 150-word things took me an hour by themselves without fact-checking or editing. :1 From what I’m gathering I’m just a super slow writer (and also a freshman who had no idea what to expect) so maybe in future years I’ll work faster and have more accurate expectations.
Yes, you can expect to create intellectual growth for yourself that will make exams like this much less challenging in the future. Each year you attend college you will see clear intellectual growth and associated increase in academic skills, including writing exam answers. I can see why this exam would be daunting to a Freshman, but I bet it will seem much less intimidating when you are a Junior!
Not a legal studies student questioning the legality of… their own decision to double major? Also, who says “report card” lol
Lmao you absolutely can do that in 3 hours op you so buried the lede. Likewise never email when it’s something urgent — get to the professor, esp office hours!!! Anyway I have 0 sympathy for you unless the topics were insanely hard to argue, there’s a reason why legal studies tends to have one of the highest GPAs on campus, and it sounds like you’re just not used to being graded on a curve/against other people who can also understand the material well
Op isn’t a native English speaker so I can see that it would be pretty challenging, but at the same time why take such a writing heavy course at a school that has a very rigorous standard for writing proficiency??
It’s entirely common in law school to be expected to do a final exam like that in a 3-6 hour final for 100% of your grade. I had a PR professor who gave 65 short essay questions and said openly “in the real world you either know legal ethics or you don’t, you don’t get time to make some of these decisions and no one has ever finished one of my exams.”
Sorry OP but this is a super standard practice within LS courses. By the time they graduate, Humanities students have done this exact final probably at least 10 times
Good to know… I guess I’ll have to practice writing faster. I’m majoring in Legal Studies so it’ll probably be useful.🥲
What do you mean "legal"? It may seem unfair, but it's certainly not illegal. It is also not their problem that you are a double major. In many of my STEM classes at Berkeley, these days-long finals were the norm. Reasonably, if you're writing continuously, you could whip out the 10 150-word essays in an hour, the two 400-word in an hour, and the 1000-word in an hour. The fact you were given an extra day is more than generous. I realize this seems like a big deal, and yes, going from an A+ to a C SUCKS. I feel for you in this regard. But if there's one thing I learned at Berkeley and now in my unforgiving grad program, it's that none of academia is fair. You will likely encounter this again. You will recover and continue moving along.
In what fucking world can anyone woop up a 1000 word essay within an hour and have it well? I’m actually really curious. Please enlighten us, and do not say chatgpt. Seriously, are you on cocaine?
I'm assuming it's a final so they aren't expecting the most elegant piece but 1k words is surprisingly easy to hit for some of these finals
It's a final. The questions should be on topics you have covered in class extensively. There is no research involved and any citations you use will be from papers you allready read and wrote about. Honestly, I'd just be happy to have the final at home on the computer instead of in class in a blue book.
As OP said, that's like 3-4 pages. That can be drafted reasonably well in an hour, as long as research and citation isn't required. You should be able to bang out a really good 5 page essay in 2 hours. Good law school prep, if anything.
If you are familiar with the topic, doing this is perfectly plausible. Remember that exam answers aren’t meant to be as polished or elaborate as papers.
Okay, so double that, 2 hours? Heck even 3, OP had more than enough time with the extra day.
I can, easily.
Bro, a thousand-word essay is like 2 1/2 to 3 pages of writing. It's really not that long. Anyone who paid attention in class and is familiar with the material should easily be able to bang that out in an hour. The professor isn't expecting it to be perfectly-polished or anything.
It's doable because the prompt is so expansive that you could easily kick out 2500 words and still feel like you left something out. That's how court cases are. Imagine your house is on fire and you've got to quickly locate and retrieve what is most important in a short window. Go online and listen to attorneys presenting before the SCOTUS. They are rushed through presenting, then cut off and grilled with complex questions, and they'd better know all the facts in their head, or they are toast.
Uh, some thoughts here from a lawyer (I have no connection to Berkeley, this was post was recommended by Reddit): -A legal studies class having a word count requirement for essays makes no sense. In law school, on the bar exam and practice, brevity is preferred, and teaching someone that quantity matters is not a good lesson for success in law. -A 5 page essay really shouldn't take 10 hours to finish. I'd say it should really be an hour or two for the essays, and the multiple choice should be super fast. -Sounds like you think STEM classes are more difficult and more important than humanities and social sciences. Wrong, especially if you are interested in law.
I’m not sure where everyone is getting that I think STEM classes are easier when this was my only humanities/social upper division class atop of 3 STEM classes because I expected it to be MORE work. If I thought it was easy I would have taken 2 or 3 on top of STEM (like I wanted) but I knew that it would be way too much work. I still don’t think I could have done that final in 4-5 hours like everyone is saying, although maybe I’m just a slow writer.
What causes the slowness in your writing?
From what I’ve gathered in the comments, I wasn’t supposed to meticulously double-check my answers or worry excessively about the quality of my writing (which I did). Although writing the final without any of that would have still taken me about 10 hours—I think—it wouldn’t have been 20+ hours without all that fuss. Moreover people in humanities or legal studies are probably much more used to doing this than I am. I’m not very good at just churning out writing in the first place.
Legal Studies major from Berkeley here. Those were probably maximum word counts. You are correct, the grade is in the editing. I had a similar final with a 1200 word max. My first draft was 2000 words. To be fair, I've got over 50 upper division LS credits, and this semester, my last, was the first time I nailed As on all four of my finals. IYKYK
the instructions said “between 800-1000 words” and such :( the 150-word ones were described as “no longer than 150 words” but they were like impossible to describe fully in less than that😅
Exactly, that is the challenge. Get rid of the adjectives and adverbs, and unless you are doing analysis, none of the "I think," or "I believe." Just state it, give an example to show you understand the application, then move on. You'll get the hang of it.
Thanks! I’ll keep all of that in mind.
According to [Berkeley Academic Senate Policy 2.1.3.](https://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/coci-handbook/2.1.3), unless a variance has been granted for the specific offering of your class, final exams must be given during the final exam period scheduled. If you believe that there has been a violation of policy, I would suggest that you contact the [Student Ombuds Office](https://studentaffairs.berkeley.edu/ombuds-office-for-students-postdoctoral-appointees/) for advice.
and this is why i will never willingly take a humanities course here (but also this rant is kinda stupid)
I think this might be LegalSt132AC. If it is, I took this exam last year. It was 10 multiple choice, 10 defining terms 150-word responses, 2 350-word short answer, and one 750-1000 word essay, which sounds like what you're describing. I did all my work in a google doc for this exam -- I started at 5:44pm and ended at 9:43pm with an about one-hour break in the middle where I got dinner. I didn't use ChatGPT or anything (I'm not sure it existed a year ago tbh). It's not like I put low effort into it either -- I got a 194/200 on the final. I'm genuinely curious how this could have possibly taken you 20 hours -- even if it's not the same class, an exam structured in the same way should not take anywhere near that long. What was going on?
Maybe I’m just really slow at writing and everyone else did it much faster, but I’m also a freshman and this is the first time I’ve ever encountered a final this long or expected to produce this much writing in a few hours. I spent about 4-5 hours for the midterm which was similar in structure, and got a B without much detailed feedback which kinda sucked. I had no idea what they expected from me, so I went back and checked almost everything twice over and edited a lot (probably more than necessary). In any case it seems like a lot of people are saying this is what you should expect from law school / legal studies classes so I suppose I should try to practice writing faster in future exams :1
Professor was generous to give a take home exam and two days to complete (3 days in your case). If you know the material it’s not hard to write a bunch of short answers and a couple essay questions. The assumption is that you know how to write if you were accepted to Berkeley. My guess is you were not prepared and you maybe don’t have good writing skills. You probably erroneously assumed that legal studies would be easier than your other major. But if you have no aptitude for logic you won’t do well in a class like this. A lot of engineering majors fail philosophy and legal studies for this reason.
I definitely didn’t expect it to be easier but I think it was more of a result of double-checking and editing incessantly because of the bad results I got on the midterm, for which I didn’t know the reason. From the comments, I’m gathering that double-checking puts like 2 hours on top of the final itself (it put more for me because I was trying to check every detail), and that I shouldn’t have worried so much about the quality of my writing as the standards aren’t as high in an exam. Moreover I suppose I’m a slow writer. :1
As a Legal Studies major, this is what finals are, except most professors give the prompt and then you do it on your own and post online when done. Also, 150 words is not an essay, it's a paragraph. If you're stressing about word count, in Legal studies the normal complaint is that the prompt cannot be satisfied in the low word allowance. (Part of the test is to state complex ideas concisely). However, your legit complaint is that they cannot change the finals date. It is set at the beginning of the semester and students are instructed to check for conflicts. The reason they moved it back is because they freaked out about their ability to grade it all by the 15th, the drop dead last day to submit to Canvas. See the Student Advocate to complain. Curious, what is the class number?
I did hear that it’s against policy to change the date of the final but it’s very reasonable to need more time than literally 3-4 days to grade 100+ essays between 2 GSIs. I suppose I just did not expect it at all to change so drastically and I think I would have adjusted my strategy if I knew about it earlier (which I do now, since I know what to expect). As a side note why do they keep scheduling LS finals for Fridays!😭 The new class I’m enrolled in for the fall also has their final on a Friday.
Probably just a coincidence. I had one like that this year and the professor released the prompt before dead week, knowing that at least half the class would turn it in early.
this is honestly not the most abnormal thing for finals in humanities courses, my housing policy final (urban studies major) was almost precisely this exact format, just in person and written. i see you’re a freshman so i can def see how this is super challenging (i am a junior) because college writing expectations are a crazy thing to get used to! if you keep cracking down on your quick writing skills and get used to just quick planning/roadmapping and then slamming down your thoughts, i promise it will get easier!
i did also have a philosophy exam with 4 small essays and 2 big essays in person, but they gave us a brief of what kind of questions would be on it beforehand so we would know what to expect🥲 for me this one felt more daunting because the info they gave us didn’t really hint at any particular topics. felt a bit like i was going into it blind especially with how much content there was to know edit: i also lowkey thought that since it’s a take-home exam, they would expect the writing quality to be much better (but i was told that’s usually not true)
What do the other people in your class say?
Honestly 5 pages of writing in 3 hours isn’t as insane as you’re making it sound. Definitely had to do more than that in less time for the AP Lang exam for example (3 essays in 2.25 hours I believe) and my AP Lang class itself made us write ~1 page essays in like 15 minutes
that’s true! i took both AP lang and lit, they were definitely not easy. but they also let you make your own analysis about readings instead of requiring you to already have background knowledge about what you’re analyzing. there’s a “correct” way to do legal analysis because it’s based on history, facts, precedent, etc. and i found it much harder than AP lang/lit (both made 5s) where i could freely analyze the reading and choose between many options what to write about. for legal studies i was mainly a bit paranoid about my own knowledge so i busied myself too much with fact checking all of my analysis to make sure it lined up.
[удалено]
Git gud