Legal Commentary

Or at least "fun"? In my post about using a one-frame cartoon as the jumping-off point for an essay (which yielded a range of good comments), one commenter argued against the idea because taking exams is not fun (the commenter likened it to a colonoscopy--a vivid metaphor, to be sure) and that when professors try to do something "different" or "clever," it gives the impression that we do not take the process seriously.

Now, maybe I was just different as a law student--which, of course, explains why I became a professor--but I can recall several exams that I genuinely enjoyed, even as I was doing them. One was for a class on the Fourteenth Amendment, in which the exam was to write the SCOTUS opinion reviewing a Fifth Circuit decision from the mid-1990s on the use of race in college admissions. Two others (one in Con Law, the other in Admin--both taught by the late Victor Rosenbloom) were just well-written and fun fact patterns, without being cutesy-clever or bound up in niche pop culture. And I was not alone in this assessment; I remember conversations with classmates about how great and fun Victor's exams were.

The idea is to try to break the tension of the exam a bit. As a student, I found it helpful if there was something unique or fun about the exam, even if only as a momentary distraction. There is a balance to be struck, of course. We as prawfs can try too hard. And there always is a risk that only a few students will "get" the humor or culture references--and perhaps that "getting it" will provide an unfair advantage on the exam itself. Several people raised this issue as to my cqrtoon idea and maybe it falls on the wrong side of the line.

But the broader question stands: Can students enjoy exams just a little bit and is there ahything we can do to help? Or is an exam always an uncomfortable medical procedure and any effort to make it otherwise merely detracts from the seriousness of the exam itself?