STUDYING FOR THE BAR FINALS

We've looked at some of the basics for any student navigating or about to navigate the Nigerian Law School. Now, let's get into studying for the bar finals as a student hoping to emerge with the best possible result, a first class.

I'd like to begin with a disclaimer. I am going to try to be as neutral as possible, and will not point to any particular study method as some sort of fail-proof strategy to excel at the bar finals. However, I am going to focus on tips that I believe would enhance and optimise whatever reading strategy you decide to take, as well as lead you in the right direction if needed.

Furthermore, reading is just one part of the puzzle. It is possible to read harder than everyone else and still not perform as well as you might desire. This is because, no matter how many hours you spend reading, your conduct during the exam week and how careful you are to avoid mistakes, as well as the grace that you have to avoid any unfortunate circumstances, really are the deal breakers when it comes to making your desired grades.

Anyways, let's begin, shall we?

MAKING NOTES

The need to make notes at the Nigerian law school is a very controversial topic, even amongst first-class students. Several students are of the point of view that to excel in your bar finals, you have to make detailed notes. Others believe that making notes is a complete waste of time and that the time spent making notes could be spent actually reading.

On this, I am on the fence. I did make notes in law school; detailed typed notes that I have shared with some of the students currently in law school. I also, for about 10 out of the 17 topics across board, made written mind maps of my typed notes (until I ran out of time to continue with them). I made the notes because I am way too much of a scatter-brain to have to rely on multiple sources of information. I preferred having an organised material that contained all the information that I needed, so I made my organised materials.

However, as I mentioned in my previous blog post, making notes is not actually reading. In fact, once you pass the 100 days mark to bar finals, I believe that you have no business with making notes any longer. Making notes in and of itself does not amount to much in terms of retention. You forget about 80% of what you have written in your notes just a few days or even hours after making them. This is because making notes, especially the way most people go about it, is mostly passive reading. I believed it to be, in my case, a necessary evil because of the kind of person I was. If I could, I would not have made notes at the Nigerian Law School. But I did, and I do not regret doing so; I would be lying if I said that there weren't times at NLS when I felt that making notes had me a little behind my peers, especially because they were reading faster than I was at some point.

Nevertheless, note-making can be productive, especially when you are not just brainlessly rewriting chunks of text from a textbook, a statute or class slides. When you use note making as a means of breaking concepts down in a way that you can understand, processing the information and rephrasing it in a way that makes subsequent reading easier and more palatable, creating patterns that make things easier for you to remember (I did this a lot with sections of law), or creating summaries that would help subsequent reading become faster and easier, it is very productive. But as you can see, even in this productivity, it all tilts to helping you when you actually start reading and reviewing your notes.

For me, even while I felt that making notes originally had me a little behind my peers in my pace of reading, I am not going to lie, the benefits later on made it all worth it, especially after I converted my typed notes into flashcards. Those flashcards were so useful when it came to my active recall, and they made retrieving information so much easier. Again, when I started using NotebookLM, I fed my typed notes to the AI system, and they were the basis for the discussions, the practice tests and other things that I used the AI tool for.

However, I never fell into the trap of having a false sense of completeness and believing that because I had thorough notes, that meant that I had learned what I had written down. As I said, making notes was a necessary evil for me during the first part of law school because they made the latter part of law school a bit easier. Notes are only the starting material in terms of reading. You'll actually eventually have to read the notes. And you do not want to have spent so much time making notes that you are then choked for time when it comes to the real deal, i.e., reading what you have written.

The simple point I'm trying to drive is that when it comes to making notes, there is no hard and fast rule. Some people make notes and excel; some people don't and still excel. I usually recommend making notes but doing so as quickly as you can so that you can get to actually reading. But in the end, the key is finding what best suits you and following through with it.

PASSIVE VS ACTIVE STUDY

When it comes to reading methods, I generally hold no reservations on whichever one a person chooses to use. However, I do strongly oppose any reading method that involves more passive study than active study. Why? Because that's self-sabotage. You're setting yourself up for failure, and if you're not careful, you won't realise it until it is too late.

Let me begin by explaining what these two terms mean. Passive study is simply consuming information without retention. It is the study equivalent of comfort food. It's easy. It feels productive. It feels like you are doing something. Your hands are flying through your notes, filling the pages with words. You're listening to a class recording. Your highlighter is breezing through the textbook. You're mindlessly rereading notes. It's the kind of study that you do when you're lying on your bed, flipping through a textbook like it's a novel. You feel like you're understanding what you are reading, and you believe that it translates to retention. But it doesn't. Most times, it just results in familiarity with the concept, meaning that if you come across it again, you are able to recognise that you have come across the concept before. But that doesn't translate to actually being able to remember what you have read.

On the other hand, active study is actively trying to produce knowledge. It's actively pushing your memory to retrieve information or to apply the information to any situation (like exam questions). It involves explaining concepts aloud without using notes, using flashcards to quiz yourself, practice testing, teaching the material to someone else, writing about a concept from memory, etc.

Active study is generally a very uncomfortable method of reading, especially at the beginning. It can be frustrating. It requires real mental work and often produces the uncomfortable feeling of failure when you have difficulty with recollection. Because of this, people tend to procrastinate or run away from active reading.

When I was in my 100 level, I read a lot of books about studying and came across several research works regarding these methods of study. I also came across different psychological strategies for effective study, like the Feynman technique, but I'm not going to bore you with psychology. I'm just going to go straight into the facts. I've never experienced a complete blackout in any exam. I also have never had to reread several times before an exam. In fact, when I tell people that I read certain topics 5 times or so in NLS, they assume that I actually reread my notes (in the regular way) over and over again. Nope. Not at all. I just encountered the topics in different ways up to 5 times before exams. In fact, I abandoned my notes about three weeks before exams, relying only on my flash cards.

Now, I do not claim to be the best guru in reading. But I do know the research, which, I must admit, some others already figured out on their own without having to be a self-help bore like myself. Did I apply all of them in law school? Nope, unfortunately not. I never managed to find a way to go about conquering the forgetting curve, and it bugged me a lot while in NLS. I didn't use the Pomodoro technique, which, if you've read my university post, you would know that I used a lot in my 100 to 200 level in the university. I didn't track my reading hours because what was there to track? I was always either reading or recovering from reading, so it was pointless.

My point is, my reading method in law school wasn't really the best out there. In fact, if I were to go back to NLS, there are a few things that I would have amended, even though I would have maintained the same pattern. But when it came to active reading, I was not lazy about it at all and spent a lot of time honing down on what I knew worked best for me. Because of that, I do believe my reading strategy in NLS was pretty solid and decent.

What was my reading strategy, you may ask? Well, I made typed notes. That took a LOT of time. I proceeded to make written summaries in a unique way (I used mind maps to break down complex topics into small parts). The mind maps were originally an experiment, but I stuck to them because they were fun and colourful and they made reading easier and concepts easier to remember.

At this point, I had already started a bit of active reading because to make mind maps, you have to process the information and break down concepts into formats conducive for a mind map. Also, I made those mind maps using the 'read, try to understand, then proceed to replicate what you remember without looking at the source material' method.

After that, I proceeded to make my Anki cards, which involved asking myself questions out of each chunk of information on my typed notes during my second reading process. Once I made my cards out of my first set of topics, I began going through them immediately. I made the mind maps during court externship, and I couldn't actively make them in court (they needed quite a bit of material), so instead, during times in court where I felt that I had gotten enough cases to fill my logbook, I would lower my head and go through the questions on my cards, quizzing myself over and over again. I also looked through the cards on the bus, keke, and just generally any single time I had some time to spare. The good thing about looking at the cards was that it really just involved pressing my phone, so it was very convenient for all sorts of free time. Again, I was actively engaging my brain, so I couldn't zone off while using the cards.

Of course, if I were to change one thing, I would have begun the card-making process before the court externship, because I believe that I would have gained a deeper mastery of its contents. I would have also fully utilised its spaced repetition pattern of asking questions, as the same was optimised to conquer the forgetting curve. Also, if I had really understood how effective the cards would be, I would not have even bothered with the mind maps (which I stopped after about 10 weeks because I felt like I needed to pour more energy into a more active form of learning).

My reading was predominantly focused on looking through the mind maps at first, and just flipping through the cards during free hours during the day (like breaks, when I was eating, when I was too tired to sit up and read, when I was waiting in line for food or some bureaucratic process) but about one month to exams, when I had gone through all the mind maps and my printed notes, I switched predominantly to the cards, going through and attempting to answer all questions while flagging all that were difficult to answer.

I also began reading with a friend about a month before exams, and we went through a PDF that had extracted all the focus points of NLS past questions. I was a tutor as well, so I also learned by actively teaching people during tutorials. And that was my reading method up until exam week.

I should also mention that a few weeks to exams, someone sent me a drive link containing drafts that had been converted to songs, and although I had already learnt most of the drafts at that point, they helped with 2 drafts in particular, both of which came out in exams. I only answered one, and it was really fun humming the song as I wrote down the draft in the exam hall (I still remember the song, by the way).

For my MCQs, I went through MCQs for the topics we were taught that week on Saturdays, using a pen and paper. I maintained the pen and paper method of answering the MCQs up until during chambers externship, when I replaced them with OMR sheets that I had printed out. I also actively participated in Law School Paddi MCQ battles every Saturday. When it was close to exams, I switched back to pen and paper because I wanted to make some jottings as I practised MCQs. I proceeded to revise all the weekly MCQs from the two different materials that I had gotten in a long note exercise book. That book eventually formed the bulk of what I revised the night before MCQs.

Remember, I am just telling my story. I am sure many other first-class students used different and even less flowery strategies. This is not a template as to how you must read to get a first class. I am just highlighting the fact that I read mostly by quizzing myself, and my written note-making was not just a mindless verbatim copying of material. I had to process information to both make the mind maps and the cards, and reading them (especially the cards) involved the difficult and often frustrating process of active recall.

No matter what pattern of reading that you engage in, active recall should take the main frame once you are done with getting an understanding of the topic. Remember that if you understand a concept, but have not stored it in your long-term memory before exams, your understanding is not going to be of any assistance at all. Passive reading might be low-effort, but actually getting things to stick using passive reading is very ineffective and time-consuming as well.

If I were to draft a reading method for law school, however you might want to go about it, here is what I would recommend:

1. Make notes if needed and use that opportunity to gain understanding of the topic (try as much as possible to process the information as you read it and don't mindlessly copy verbatim from your textbooks, slides or materials).
2. For the first phase reading afterwards, read your notes actively, with full attention.
3. Close everything and retrieve what you've read from time to time during your first phase reading. Write, speak, or sketch everything you remember. This is the commencement of the desirable difficulty that comes with active reading. But don't shy away from it. Lean into the discomfort.
4. Compare what you have said or written against the source. Note exactly what you missed, as the act of making mistakes and getting corrected is the whole point of active recall.
5. Revisit the same material 1 day, 3 days, and 7–10 days later using the same active recall or retrieval method, not rereading. Doing this will prevent the common pitfall of forgetting topics that you've spent so much time reading before. This is one step I wish I had focused on more.
6. After some time, try to mix topics rather than looking at concepts of the same type together. (This is where the cards really stood out to me, because after the first flip, the concepts were scattered based on levels of difficulty for me. I found this particularly useful in learning my RPC because after some time, I began to be quizzed randomly — for example, I might be asked on Rule 15(4) in a question, and the next question brings up Rule 36. Being able to remember random sections at a go helped me to actually gain mastery of the rules.)
7. Explain the topics to someone (real or imagined). You can give pretend lectures and make them fun and interesting. Remember that the more unique, interesting and engaging your reading sessions are, the more likely you are to remember what you read.
8. Of course, do not forget to look at past questions and MCQs.

PAST QUESTIONS AND MCQS

One very common pattern of active recall that all Nigerian Law School students have to engage in is reading past questions and MCQs. You cannot enter the exam hall without any knowledge of how the questions you are about to encounter would possibly look like. Most NLS students, at some point or the other, realise this, but some unfortunately find out a bit too late.

I advise that you get into past questions and MCQs as quickly as you can. You can start from your very first week by finding materials that arrange the MCQs and past questions according to the topics. An app I used, Law School Paddi, had some of the MCQs arranged per topic, but I also used about two more comprehensive materials that did the same. If you do not find similar materials for past questions, you can do as I did and manually search for the said questions yourself.

Also, don't just read the questions, then read the answers passively. Use the past questions to train your active recall, speed and accuracy. Answer the questions blindly without looking at any material, and then later, you can search for the answers to ascertain your accuracy. However, I would advise that you be very careful about the answers provided in some of the past questions that you might encounter. Many of the easily and widely accessible ones do not contain the official marking schemes and, as a result, can contain several errors that you might take to be the correct answers if you are not careful. If you are confused about an answer provided in any past question material, do not just take it in hook, line and sinker, but check your source materials or ask seniors or lecturers or your mates about the answer to the question.

Additionally, as much as you can, practise the past questions under timed conditions. You are given one hour to answer a hundred questions on the MCQ paper and three hours to answer four theory questions. I would advise that you practice the MCQs and past questions so much that you can answer the questions well below the time that is given for same. For MCQs, I suggest that you train yourself to be able to answer the 100 questions within 30 to 40 minutes and for theory, you should train to be able to answer the four questions within two hours.

This is because at the point of practising, you are not under exam tension, so you tend to be less cautious about the answers you give. Therefore, when you practise, you are much freer, and that means that you would tend to answer the questions faster than how you would answer in the exam hall. For instance, I trained myself to answer MCQs within 30 minutes, but in the exam hall, I finished within 45 minutes. For theory, I trained to be able to answer a question in 30 minutes and in exams, I didn't have so much time to revise, but I never submitted an unfinished work.

I strongly advise going through as many past questions as you can. At this moment, you can access the ones from all the way back to 2009; that's almost 20 years of questions. I assure you that if you look through all of them, with the consistent pattern of repeating questions in NLS, you would encounter a lot of question formats that would not confuse you in the exam because you have already seen patterns of questions like them and tackled the questions. Answering as many past questions and MCQs as you can in NLS is a major hack to getting a first class.

MENTORSHIP

Alongside your reading strategy, mentorship makes a real difference. I honestly do not know how a person can go through the Nigerian Law School without some form of mentorship, whether direct or indirect. The NLS presents such a unique and difficult situation that it helps a lot to have people who have done it before give you guidance on how it can be done.

During my time, I had a lot of mentors. I called, chatted and discussed with a lot of people who had passed through the Nigerian Law School and gotten the grades that I desired. Also, I was a facilitator in the Red Scroll Group, which was a group where those of us at NLS reviewed past questions every night and had mentors correct and advise us.

For those who do not know any seniors to talk to, the good thing is that, just like this post, there are a lot of write-ups and videos out there on how to excel at the Nigerian Law School. Also, during your stay, there will be a lot of webinars where your seniors can address you and give you tips to excel at NLS. Find every possible means to look for them and get the necessary information that you need so that you don't make costly mistakes that could have been avoided had you just asked the right questions.

USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Beyond mentorship from people, it's worth talking about mentorship of a different kind: AI tools. I am a very big advocate of avoiding suffering as much as you can and always finding easier ways to get around things. There is really no reward at all for suffering, and the amount of time and difficulty it took you to understand concepts is not only irrelevant in terms of the grades that will be allocated to you, but also incredibly time-consuming.

Therefore, I recommend the WISE use of Artificial Intelligence in law school. AI can help break down concepts and sections that might be difficult to understand and help you understand them faster. However, I believe that for AI systems like ChatGPT, that is as much as its use should go. You cannot use ChatGPT to answer past questions or pre-class tasks. ChatGPT and most, if not all, other AI systems do not have sufficient knowledge of both Nigerian law and the NLS standard of answering questions. They will feed you rubbish if you attempt to use them that way.

In NLS, ChatGPT was particularly helpful in helping me understand complex sections of CAMA and other regulations. However, I found that the most versatile tool was NotebookLM. Using that AI system, I could upload my typed notes, create engaging podcast sessions, MCQs, summaries, digital mind maps, extract cases and sections, etc. NotebookLM was also less likely to hallucinate when I asked it questions because the answers were based on my notes.

Now, I do not know if that is the only possible use of NotebookLM. I am certain that you can use the system for many other things. But I found out about it a bit too late to really explore all its potential. However, I do advise that you use the tool and all other possible tools out there to make your reading faster and more efficient.

YOUR READING ENVIRONMENT

In NLS, I read everywhere: in cars, buses, kekes, walking down the road, at restaurants, etc. My reading was on a 'once I have time to' basis, and I did not necessarily have to create a perfect environment to read. There were times I read in a very noisy class. I read outside of my corridor, in the middle of my room, in the laundry room of my campus, in the reading rooms, in the common rooms, while court was in session, etc.

When it comes to a physical environment for reading, I do not advise being the sort of person who can only read in specific places. In my court externship, I encountered people who did not bother to open their books all through the court session (and my court used to close very late), because they were convinced they simply could not read in such an environment. I personally also do not prefer having to crouch down in the middle of court proceedings to read or read in the other inconvenient places that I have mentioned, but I was desperately fighting for time so my preferences really did not matter when it came to my reading environment.

However, when I could, I liked to make my reading corner comfortable. I preferred a big space to contain everything I needed, and as a result, I found pairing the sofas in the common room with my bed table was my preferred choice of reading space. However, there were times when I would feel the need to stay awake for long stretches of time and felt that the sofas were too comfortable for that. So I would head to the laundry room of the campus and sit in a very uncomfortable corner in the room (on top of a sink space), propping my bottom with a throw pillow to be able to sit for long stretches of time, and whenever I went there to read, sleep had no chance of finding me. I also would sit on the arms of the sofas in the reading rooms when I felt too comfortable on the sofa. 

Additionally, when we were about a month to bar finals, and I realised that I could no longer read in close proximity to my non-reading phone or any form of distraction, I ensured that I never read in my room or anywhere remotely close to the phone. So I would keep my phone in my room and head to the common room, which was a bit of distance from my room so that my phone and social media could be out of sight and out of mind.

Essentially, in NLS, I would recommend that you adapt to be able to read anywhere you can. However, if you have the chance to arrange your reading corner, ensure that it is comfortable (but not too comfortable; leave your bed as much as you can) and make sure that it is free from distractions.

SLEEP

On a related note, this is going to be a very small segment, but I feel the need to state that your success in NLS is not measured by how little you sleep during the process. Now, I would be lying if I said that the rigours of NLS would not require you to sacrifice sleep, but please, if you are burnt out from reading, take a break. Take naps. If your head is aching, if you are no longer comprehending what you are reading, if you are feeling sick while reading, it might be a sign that you need to shut your books and sleep for a while.

Also, know yourself and adapt your sleep schedule to what works best for you. I slept for about 5 hours daily because I liked reading very early in the morning, but I know someone who slept for 7 hours every night (because she could not function otherwise) and still got a first class. I slept at night and read in the mornings and afternoons, but I know first-class students who preferred to sleep in the afternoon after lectures to wake up at night and read till daybreak. Night reading is often viewed as the superior reading for some reason, but the fact that I almost never read from the hours of 10pm to 3am in the morning did not change the outcome I had at the end of NLS. In the end, it's what's in your head and what you put down in the exam hall that matters, not how little you slept or whether you never slept at night.

CONCLUSION

Now, this is just a guideline on the best and most effective patterns of studying for NLS. However, I feel the need to point out again that you should not get caught up in reading/studying patterns that do not work for you just because your friends, roommate, or whoever, are doing the same. Find what works for you and maintain that system.

This also goes into times and places that you choose to read. If you are a night reader, read at night; if you can read during the day, do so; if you do not like reading in the library, my friend, please don't go. You will not suddenly become more serious because you went to the library to read. Once your reading method involves more active recall, is effective and works well, there is no need to change it. If the times you prefer to read are the times when you feel alert, and your brain is the most optimised to remember, read during those times. There is no 'one size fits all' approach to getting a first class at NLS.

Next up, we'll be looking at tackling the externship phase of NLS. Good luck!

On the 26^th of March, 2025, I was presented with an award for emerging as the best-graduating student in the Nnamdi Azikiwe University faculty of law for the 2023/2024 session with a cumulative CGPA of 4.84. Although unannounced, I was also the best female graduating student in the university. Now, although I take a measure of indulgence in joking about my ‘unseriousness’ during my university days, and how I performed a lot of last-minute wonders, the truth is that emerging with that sort of result did not happen by chance, but was the product of a lot of intentionality, wisdom and intimacy with God.

So let’s hop on and ride with me on my journey to becoming the best graduating student in my class. Forgive me, you are going to see a few of my personal non-aesthetic writing on this journey. Let’s start with this one which was something I wrote at the age of 16 in my first journal.

YOUR GATES

In Christianity, there is a popular concept known as the spiritual gates. These gates are the entrances to your heart and life, through which we accept information which would then be processed by our hearts and minds and play a huge part in the way we live our lives. Some of the gates are our eyes, ears and mouth because they are the main organs of the body used in the collection of information.

Why am I talking about the spiritual gates? Because we often neglect these and the influence they play in our lives, not only our academics. Even in all of the talks that I have given regarding academic excellence, I do not believe that I have actually spoken about our spiritual gates and the roles that they play in our academics.

But now, trying to find a beginning, I believe that it started with the sort of information that I began to receive, back in 2020.

Now, you may ask why 2020, given that I began schooling in 2019 and I haven’t had a terrible, (well, in the general overview of terrible) semester. That’s easy to answer. I have never deemed myself a remarkably and extraordinarily intelligent person, at least more so than any other person. I was mostly not at the top of the class in my primary school days. I found Mathematics, amongst other subjects, difficult to understand, the only person in my science-oriented family to have such a peculiar ailment. In fact, the only time that I performed excellently was during my Common Entrance Examinations, in which, due to the diligent perseverance of my mother and the relentless evenings of (mostly forced) studying, I was able to emerge the best in the school. In my secondary school days, I was mostly also just an average student until my senior secondary school days, when I wrote my first award-winning book, began to represent the school in external competitions and dropped all science courses. My WAEC and JAMB scores were good, but not exceptional, just good enough to be on the merit list to study law.

So, you see, I was never really so much of a star academically. I took my academics seriously enough to pass, but not enough to be gobsmackingly outstanding. When I first entered the university, I did not enter with a storm. I did not immediately begin to read voraciously and burn the midnight candle. In fact, during the first two months of my university days, I would come to classes, sometimes sleep through lectures, then go back home and watch a movie till it was time to do other things. I remember seeing other students stay back after lectures to read and wondering what their deal was. School was not that serious.

Then 2020 happened.

I will admit, before COVID happened, exams were probably scheduled to be held in about two months’ time. But then, the lecturers went on strike and I was hearing rumours that the next thing that would come after the strike would be exams. So, I began visiting the Kenneth Dike Library. I would go there in the morning, read my GS books for a while, come out, buy snacks, wander about the library lusting after novels and sometimes caving into my lusts, and resume reading, leaving by 6 pm in the evening. I did cover some ground, but a good chunk of what I engaged in was pseudo-work. Libraries were and have never been my thing.

PSEUDO-WORKING

A mentally draining state of work in which one works in a distracting environment and insists on working in long, tedious stretches thereby ending up crippling the brain’s ability to think clearly and efficiently accomplish the task at hand – Cal Newport.

Anyways, when COVID came, libraries were closed and I was stuck at home. Everyone has different stories to share about that time, some positive and some negative. Mine is this. I spent about two months completely abandoning my academics or any other productive endeavour, simply existing and following my parents to watch CNN. Then after some time, I guess I became positively sick of doing nothing.

I cannot remember the first day that I decided to pick a book to read, but I do remember that one of my first books was ‘Letters to a Law student’ by Nicholas McBridge.

Shortly after that, I encountered books authored by Cal Newport and proceeded to feast on all of them, from ‘Deep Work’ to ‘How to Win at College’ to ‘How to be a Straight A Student’ to ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’ and ‘Digital Minimalism’. Then, I read ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear. Oh, and I didn’t just read these books. I carefully jotted all that I intended to revisit from these books, some of which I will go back to in the course of writing this post, in a huge thick-back notebook which is still in pristine condition.

These books, and I’m not just making mouth when I say this, changed my life. Suddenly, I was trudging back to my abandoned school books, downloading habit-tracking apps and making detailed to-do lists. They were the fuel of motivation that I needed to begin structuring my life, a structure which has influenced and is still influencing my day-to-day activities.

So through the gates of my mind and eyes, I had been introduced to a new framework for my life, one that I can say was the beginning of my success. But books are a bit abstract, in a way. Though filled with detailed explanations, they do not offer a true viewing experience into the reality of living a structured life as a student. Even this post will not show you, truly, how I lived my life as a student.

That’s where the gates of the ears come to work together with the eyes, through videos and documentaries. For me, it was through certain YouTube videos of students, both those in Ivy League universities such as Vee Kativhu and Elena Handtrack and the study streamers such as James Scholz, A studies (Adelina), and Study Vibes (Heleen) amongst many others.

Through them, I learned that it was possible, through the right framework, such as the Pomodoro system, to read for long lengths of time without burning out and breaking down. I must admit, I never reached the feat of reading for 12 hours in a day as the study streamers did but I did hit 10 hours at least once and 8 hours many times. I would, just like they did, read for 50 minutes, take a 10-minute plus break, then come back to reading whilst carefully documenting my reading hours in a mini jotter where I also wrote down my goals and whether or not I was able to complete them.

So, when the lockdown ended and after eight months of strike plus lockdown, the exam timetable was released with only three weeks to prepare for exams, I was ready.

If you’re in 100 level, this is the best time for you to begin visiting the right sources and reading the right books to ensure that you have the right mindset towards your academics. Even if you are in your 500 level and reading this, you can spend some time reshaping your mindset by feeding yourself with the right sources of information. There’s a sort of magic that comes with seeing the feats that others have been able to attain, especially when it comes with step-by-step instructions on how to attain the same feat. It shapes your mind. Makes certain seemingly impossible things become more realistic and possible. 

YOUR COMPANY

In 200 level, I moved out of my parent’s house (after much pleadings) and into the Elmada hostel. My parents were reluctant to let me go but I was able to convince them that I was being repressed from doing several activities which I could engage in as a student by staying at home. They saw the logic in that, but not the logic in my wanting to be alone, so I was practically forced to choose between Unizik Girls’ hostel and Elmada. Choosing Elmada was a no-brainer.

Maybe it was in a bid to prove to my parents that they were not making a mistake or perhaps it was because, as a 200 level student, I was not really engaged in so many extracurricular activities, but I do not recall ever reading as hard as I did in my 200 level. That 5.0 that I got both semesters? God’s grace, yes, but also sweat and blood and many tears. I have a vivid memory of being in my room crying and having panic attacks due to my academics in my 200 level, the kind which hit me many more times during my university days, but never in my 100 level. You see, results of my 100 level had started coming out, and even though I did have some heartbreaks (a few Bs), the possibility of graduating with a first class was becoming clearer than ever. I was in a very solid first class, and I intended to retain it.

Someone told me something when I was still a secondary school student when I visited Landmark University for the national stage of a competition. She was a second-class upper student and she told me that if she were handed a first class, she would not accept it because there was this pressure to keep up and replicate one’s success when one begins on such a strong pedestal. How true that is.

Anyways, I am not going to emphasize much on my long hours of reading, on how I practically moved my table and chair to Elmada reading room and many times, only came down to my room to eat and sleep, or on how I was known as the girl who practically colonised the Elmada reading room when I lived there. Oh no. I am going to talk about the company I met there.

You see, I strongly believe that your association shapes your mentality. If your friends and acquaintances consist of unserious people who do not have any goals in life, it’s easy to fall into the same slump as them. As a wise man once said, if you are surrounded by 5 fools, you did not count well, they are six.

The girls I met and befriended in Elmada were focused, career-oriented girls, who took academics seriously. When I was with them, it was easy to get motivated to read. You see, I very much enjoy encountering people that make me feel oppressed. I run on that kind of positive jealousy. Yes, make me feel like I have not covered anything even though my eyes have sunken in from reading, so that I can go and sit back down and continue reading. Make me question my seriousness. Make me push myself to my breaking point and push myself even more. I thrive on that kind of friendship. I could feel unmotivated and lazy which, yes, I did feel on certain days, I am not a superhuman or the human embodiment of hard work and diligence, sift to certain people’s rooms and head back feeling an uncommon sort of strength to keep grinding. I mean, when this girl had finished making notes on a course in which I had not gone halfway through and this other girl had already learnt all the cases of a course when I was still beginning to learn the principles, did I dare go back to my room to sleep and indulge in fantasy novels?

Some of these people ended up becoming part of a quasi-reading group that I was involved with. One was essentially my reading partner, and we answered past questions together, reviewed cases right before examination, and kept each other on track. I do not hold words when I say this, my friends and company were my academic saviours. During times in which activities prevented me from having the notes I needed or when I needed the extra boost, or even a point in the right direction for my studies to ensure that I was in line with what was going to be set in the examination, I could always rely on them. I was more than willing to learn from them, to feed from their well of knowledge.

So there lies your next task. Look at your circle of friends. Who do you need to cut off? Who do you need to draw closer to? Many people have this complex that prevents them from reaching out for help even when they desperately need it. Kill that complex. It can ruin your life. It does not matter if you think you are smarter than that friend of yours. If the person has something that can help you academically which you do not have, kill that pride of yours and go beg for it. Also, be ever willing to help and teach others too, whenever such a need arises.

YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

Towards the end of my 200 level and the beginning of my 300 level, my relationship with God took a deeper and more intimate curve. This was mostly based on the fact that I had found a church in which I became committed and I was made an executive at CLASFON. It was also in that period that I began to hear clearly from God, when I got a prophesy that I ran with for the rest of my academic years, the vision of academic dominion.

You see, my 300 level came with a lot of heartaches, and none of them had anything to do with a reduction in my reading patterns. The level was already famed to be notorious, with courses which had strict lecturers or lecturers that expected me to compromise on my values to get the grades that I deserved. However, that was the year when the vision for academic dominion became clear. I still have journal entries where I wrote down God’s promise for my academic excellence, the seed I sowed for my academics, and the revelation that I would emerge as the best graduating student in my class.

At the time of writing it, I was very doubtful of my status as the best in the class, and when the results came out and I got a B in Criminal Law, the first ever law course in which I had gotten less than an A apart from Logic, and a D in accounting, it was my relationship with God, the words that He spoke to me in spite of my doubts and lack of faith that kept me afloat, helped me keep pushing. When I was in my final year and I felt like an academic wreck even as people all around me were proclaiming me to be the BGS, it was my spiritual advisers who helped me stay strong.

God has spoken to me about many aspects of my life, but I am glad that He was ever present in my academics.

Often times, we tend to neglect God when it comes to academics, either abandoning Him during exam periods or only coming to him to cry for help during exam periods. For the overly ambitious, we tend to think that time spent working in church or serving in a fellowship takes away the time that we could be using to read our books. I’ve been guilty of this sort of mentality, so I know. But spending time with God actually quickens you. When you are intentional about involving God in your academics, He will give you tips and tricks on how to memorise a lot of things in a short period of time. Trust me on this. God does not want you to fail.

But be careful with this. Know how to balance your time. Do not get so invested in church activities that you forget that you came to school to study, not to run your church or fellowship. You cannot be spending 10 hours praying during the exam season and neglecting your academics. Even God frowns at such poor time management. As my pastor once told me, do academics like there is no God and do God like you are not a student. In simple words, find balance.

YOUR READING PATTERN

By 400 level, I had become a machine. I was doing 10 things at the same time. I had no time for myself. I had no free days. Every day was occupied with something that took time away from academics. No longer did I have the luxury of spending eight hours a day immersed in my academics, like some other students did, like I did as a 100 and 200 level student. I was pressed for time and the academic calendar was not even smiling down at me.

This might not resonate with certain students in certain fields of study but the legal profession is oversaturated. We have way too many lawyers with way too few stable, well-paying jobs. So fighting for the good spots, the top-tier law firms and the generous salaries is like a blood bath, with so many students desperately clawing after very few spots. Simply put, as a law student, you cannot afford to just read. You’ll be making a huge mistake if you try to go down that route.

Due to grade inflation, there are more first-class students than ever, and there are even more second-class upper students. In the end, even though the first class comes with its set of advantages, it really boils down to how you applied yourself while in school. Law firms want to know if you are really a good investment.

That realisation dawned on me hardest in my penultimate and as a result, I decided that I was going to apply myself the most in all areas. I held numerous time demanding leadership positions. I went to a few conferences. I participated in a lot of competitions. I picked back my essay writing skills and tried to refine myself as a writer so that I could win national awards. Plus, I was actively serving in one of the most time-demanding positions in CLASFON, as well as serving as a worker in a church that had activities almost every single day.

So, my academics…

At a point, I realised that there was no way that I was going to be able to trudge on the same time-consuming way that I had done in my lower levels. I simply did not have the time to do so. So I prayed. Asked God for help and to show me reading hacks that I could implement to ace my academics.

And He did.

I’ll list some of them out here.

1.     Lecture Recordings and YouTube lectures: I had always known that people took recordings of lectures to help them in their note-making but I felt it to be a long process, especially for someone who had just attended the same class. However, God showed me another way that I could make use of lecture recordings. You see, we spend a long time engaging in activities that do not require the use of our brains very much. Washing clothes. Cooking. Cleaning and sweeping. Trekking to and from classes (I trekked a lot in school). The learning part of our brain is not actively engaged when we perform those activities. And those activities rack up a ton of precious hours.

It occurred to me that I could find a way to engage my brain in learning when performing those activities. I could blast the lecturers’ voices in my ears or through my speaker as I did those mundane activities whilst actively trying to recall what they said. Many times, I would pause and try to repeat the cases or principles mentioned as I performed those tasks. It wasn’t very easy to do. I usually prefer listening to music when doing those activities. But I can tell you that a lot of cases and principles effortlessly stuck in my head because I had listened to them several times through audio recordings. You know how you suddenly learn a song you’ve never bothered to actively learn simply because you have listened to it multiple times? Yeah.

The same thing applied to the YouTube videos that discussed law, especially those by Dieko Daniels and some Indian videos, because Indian and Nigerian law are very similar. Sometimes, due to the videos, I even got ahead of lectures and got an understanding of certain concepts before the lecturers taught them.

2.     Listening to typed notes: I began typing my notes in my 100 level, inspired by the videos of Elena Handtrack, an Oxford law student and the way that she made her notes. But up until my 400 level, I only made them, then drew revision notes which I would use for final readings during examinations. However, I also applied the same tactics of listening to the recordings and many times, doing that saved my grades. I can recall two very specific instances.

a.     400 level first semester. The exam timetable was brutally wicked or wickedly brutal. We were to have a marathon of three papers, but the issue was, Political Science was to be held by 4 pm on Tuesday, I think, and Equity and Trusts was to be held by 8 am the very next day. I had played a very risky game with my political science that semester, focusing on the law courses and abandoning it since it was my only borrowed course and I did not particularly like the lecturers. So, you can guess that the hours I had before the exam were spent in brutal cramming mixed with a good amount of righteous panicking. Then, in the exam hall, I wrote so quickly that my palm was spattered with ink when I was done, and I did not even get to finish all that I wanted to write. When I trudged home by 7 pm, I was exhausted. I had a blistering headache, but at the back of my head, I was well aware that I had about 12 hours to revise a course that I had not looked into for a while due to the other papers that I had. When I went back home, my body needed sleep but my mind could not let me. Funnily enough, I could not also read because of the furious headache I was battling with. I lay in my bed and watched YouTube videos, trying to reduce the panic and to calm myself down but after an hour, I still could not read. So I went to God.

Shortly after, I had an idea. I picked up my Tablet which contained my typed notes, grabbed my speaker, used the PocketBook app to begin to play the notes, and grabbed a pen and paper. For the first time in my life, I prepared for an exam without really looking at the notes I had, only jotting down case names so that I could revise them one last time before exams. By 11 pm, I was done with two lecturer’s parts (the parts I ended up answering) and went to sleep for about two hours, to wake up with a fresher mind and revise (by reading) a lecturer’s part which I did not eventually answer.

People did not perform well in that exam. I think I got the highest score, if not close to the highest score in the class for that course.

b.     500 level second semester. A particular conveyancing lecturer emphasized a particular topic so much, even pointing out areas that he claimed that he would set in his examination, that I was a hundred percent certain that he would set that part. So I focused all my attention there, all but ignoring the second topic that he taught. The semester was not a nice one, so I gambled a lot and that was one of my gambles. The morning of the exam, I was sure that I had everything that I needed to know on the one topic in my head, so when bathing, I decided to just play my notes on the second topic, trying to grab all that I could from it. (I hate gambling with exams). I came to the exam hall only to find out that the lecturer had ignored the first topic entirely, setting his three questions from only the one topic he taught once and very half-heartedly. Two things saved my exam, the notes I listened to and the revisions I did that morning with my coursemate and reading partner on a past question covering that topic.

3.      Active Recall and Quizzing Myself: This one trick is the main reason why I didn’t necessarily need to spend all the hours of my day reading. It is the ultimate hack to easily memorise anything that you have read. You see, I have never subscribed to the idea of passively reading your notes over and over again and hoping that somehow, all that you have read will stick to your brain without actually trying to make sure that what you have read has stuck to your brain. You don’t need to read your material ten times. You just have to read once to get a general knowledge of the topic, the second time whilst making your notes and then, the third time, you begin active recall. In fact, if you can, (I can’t, I have to have an organised note), you can even skip the second step and go straight to active recall after getting a general understanding of the trajectory of whatever topic you are trying to recall.

Active recall and cramming are not the same. In cramming, you are trying to get everything inside your head the exact same way that it is written in your books, with little understanding of the concept. Active recall is more fluid because it requires an understanding of the topic in question. My trick was to read several pages of a concept, close the book and try to rewrite what I have just learned (not everything verbatim, just the main points) in an organised manner. This was what made up my summary notes. Also, for cases, I used different forms of mnemonics (down to even an attempt at building memory castles) to ensure that they stuck because they were my weak points.  Then, I would go over them, not by just rereading them, but by sitting or standing or walking around my room, recalling (either orally or in my mind) all the cases and sections and key principles to be perfectly sure that I understood them. If it were possible, I would get a classmate to assist in this, handing them a long list of cases and principles that I intended to memorise and having them listen to me go through them (if you are going to do this, be ready to reciprocate the favour). Ensuring that I had mastery over the concepts was my key secret in ensuring that I could pour out all I knew and breeze through exams without spending precious time cracking my head to remember what I needed to write or looking for who to ask for answers. Active recall consumes more brain power and is more stressful, but in the end, it saves so much precious time.

Regarding quizzing myself, I never wrote an exam without looking at a myriad of past questions and attempting to answer them. I do not even know how people write exams without doing this. It gave me an idea of the lecturer’s exam style, the way the questions were to be arranged, as well as the concepts that I needed to pay special attention to. Also, when I looked at a past question and could not answer the question well, I knew that I needed to read that concept more.

4.     Teaching: Those who knew me when I was in the university know that I spent my Saturdays teaching as a tutor in the CLASFON academic board for four out of the five years that I spent in the university. However, I am not talking about the teaching I did then, as I was teaching concepts that I already had mastery in to younger students (hence, the subjects were not relevant to the exams that I was preparing for). I am talking about teaching my fellow classmates.

I love teaching. It is a highly underestimated way of learning. Even better, I love attempting to teach concepts that I am still attempting to gain full mastery of. There’s a magic in cracking your head trying to figure out the best way to teach a coursemate something that you have just gone through, understood but have not yet memorised, that makes the concepts stick. Of course, you must actually know and have a level of understanding of the concept for you to teach it to others, but for the purposes of learning and memorising them, the concepts do not need to all be in your head to be able to teach someone that is still trying to understand. Get out your textbook or notebook and offer to teach the person and when it’s time to do your private reading, you’ll be surprised to learn that the cases and principles have effortlessly stuck to your head.

5.      My summary papers: I do not know how you read in the mornings of or the night before exams, but I find it incredibly unrealistic and quite panic-inducing to still have to refer to your textbook during those critical hours. For someone like me, who took advantage of her writing skills and the plethora of online resources I had to make quite voluminous notes, it would mean having to look at a hundred, two hundred pages worth of content. Absolutely not. That stuff is for the month before exams, two weeks before exams, a week before exams, but definitely not exam week. In the line of active recall, I always ensured that I had like one or two A4 papers covering all key cases, principles, locus classici and all other important material (in very a condensed form) for each lecturer. The importance of having this was that I was not overwhelmed on the morning of the exam. I would go through the concepts in my head and if I forgot any, it would be very easy for me to pinpoint the concept. Sometimes (rarely), I would need to get more information to supplement the little in my notes (if I realised that I had forgotten quite a lot). Then, I would go back to my notes to look at them briefly.

Remember, you should have already covered all your material and had your notes and summary papers by the night before exam. But then again, I know that situations might occur in which you would need to learn new material that morning or the night before. Try to squeeze in time for that but do not, in the process of trying to learn new things a little too late, forget the ones you have already learnt. Double down on your strong topics. I do not know how much to emphasize it. Make sure that you know the ones that you know very well before you begin to look for new things to learn.

The thing is, it is important to find reading patterns that enable time efficiency. You can’t just only focus on reading in school so when you read, you should ensure that you maximise every single hour you spend with your books. You cannot waste your time, for instance, engaging in passive reading without using active recall because you’ll end up forgetting things in the exam hall or spending precious time that you do not have trying to think or even resorting to cheating out of frustration.

YOUR EXAM TACTICS

It’s amusing and devastating how months of work are condensed into just a week or two weeks’ worth of three-hour papers each. But it is what it is. And while that system of testing is not ideal, you do have to adapt to what you have. I had a bad experience during exams. Many times, I would break down and be on a plethora of drugs just to boost my system enough to write exams. In my 500 level 1^st semester, I seriously broke down with malaria immediately after my jurisprudence paper. My saving grace was the fact that the next paper came three days later. In my 500-level second semester, after subjecting my body to night classes, marathon reading and energy drinks so that I could cover all that I needed after the time for exams was slashed, I ended up taking like 6 drugs daily during the duration of the exams, some of which made me sleep like a mad person during my exam nights. In my 300 level second semester, whilst preparing for my Intellectual property exam, I had an exacerbated flare of allergic rhinitis that rendered me so unable to breathe properly and function that my parents had to come at night to my lodge to administer injections to me (now that I recall, I also took energy drinks that session. Avoid energy drinks, kids.) Of course, you should try as much as possible not to be like me. In fact, I am trying not to be like myself now that I am in law school so that I will not break down during bar finals. But that just shows how much weight and pressure even I, who tries to read early, can get into the moment of exams. However, you have to navigate such a season and excel and I believe that a lot of conscious decisions that you make in the exam morning have a huge role to play in determining the grade you come out with. Here are a few hacks of mine for maximising your exams:

1.      Come early: This is very important. I have never, for the life of me, understood why people came late for exams. Even if you have not finished reading, bathe and come to school then look for a good spot to continue your reading. If you have a habit of falling asleep on exam mornings and sleeping just a little too much, stay with a friend that will wake you up. But just come early, at least 30 minutes early. Information flies a lot during exam mornings. I cannot even begin to recall how many times the information I got from my friends on exam morning has helped me pass. There are times that I have been informed of a new case I did not know about, or an area that the lecturer said that he would set that I perhaps did not know about, and used that 30 minutes to grab something. Ideally, when coming for my exams, I try as much as possible to have read and recalled everything so that I can have precious time to get this information.

Additionally, you do not want to end up in a situation where an exam starts a bit early and then your head is crowded with fears of missing out on precious meaning as you are running to school. Or you do not want to have to encounter a nasty invigilator who will take away precious minutes of your time. Just come early and get settled.

2.     Be vigilant: Don’t be dull during exam mornings. Look around. If there are places where people are gathered, go and find out why. Trust me on this one, at least more than half of the time, someone has gotten information regarding the exams and is telling his or her friends. That information could save your life.

3.      Choose your preferred seat: Choosing a seat that you are comfortable with does wonders for how organised you will be during exams. Ideally, I look for a seat in front, near or under a fan, with enough lighting. I also choose to sit next to people who I know will not say a single word to me during exams and will allow me to be completely at peace whilst I write my exams. Of course, to be fair, sometimes life happens and you can get moved to a horrible seat next to noisemakers and have to cope with them. But in my experience, that rarely happened and because I came early and chose my seat, I was able to optimise the hours I used in writing my exams.

4.     Get good stationery: I do not think that I need to talk too much on this. If you have ever been in a situation where one of your pens have stopped halfway through exams, and you did not have a replacement, you would know the importance of carrying at least two of all the stationery you need and making sure that all of them are working properly.

5.      Start strong: If you ever saw me writing during exams, you would think, for the first hour, that I was the most confused person you have met. I do not write serially. I write according to the topics that I recall best. So I can write 1a, leave space for b, go to 1c, go to 3, then to 2 and fill in the gaps when I am done writing the ones that I am strongest in. It saves my time and when I am going over the ones that I do not remember so clearly, I am doing so with the peace of the knowledge that I have written the ones that I know very, very well.

6.     You will forget things. Be comfortable with that and plan to forget: It’s painful knowing that you should know something during exams and finding out that you have forgotten it, but this is a common occurrence. Ideally, you should recall 95% of whatever you have read and memorised, but you cannot kill yourself because of the few that you do not remember. Say a mournful goodbye to them and move on. This is why you should read like someone who plans to forget. You cannot just select three cases when there are ten available because you 100% trust your brain that you will be able to recall all three. Well, I don’t trust my brain that much, so I learn 8 to 10 so that if I forget, in the worst-case scenario, I would still be able to recall 4. Then, if I recall the 4, I do not kill myself trying to recall the 6 that I have forgotten because I know that what I have written is sufficient. I move to the next question.

7.      Time yourself: Time constraints are one of the most difficult aspects of exams. The time given for exams is often too short for the volume of work which students are expected to recall and write. Due to this, even I have fallen into situations in which I have not been able to finish answering exam questions to the best of my ability.

So, if you have read and you do not have a plan on how to tackle the time constraints, they may be the one thing that could reduce your A to a B. Hence, you should have a plan for how to write your exam answer and execute that plan. Be ruthless in managing the time spent on each question. That means that when the time allotted for a question runs out, stop working on that question. Leave some blank lines in your answer sheet in case you have time to return to the question at the end of the exam, but move on to the next question. The biggest mistake often made is spending too much time on one question (or one aspect of a single question), which leaves insufficient (or no) time to work on subsequent questions. Also, should you run into time problems, write your answers in short notes, covering all of the relevant points. Shorten the paragraphs, ensuring you just write the essential parts and leave out all of the fluff.

To monitor the time, carry a watch if you have to but if you cannot read an analogue clock quickly, you can ask an invigilator for time at intervals. Of course, this works best if you are in front, directly facing an invigilator, like I was during most exams. This is important so that you do not get caught unawares when the time for exams is exhausted.

It’s painful having to prepare for months and months just to have little contingencies that occur during exams ruin the grades that you deserve. So you must do everything possible to ensure that you maximise your exams to achieve the grades that you deserve.

YOUR BELIEFS

Now, this is a very sensitive area so please make sure that you read this carefully. A lot of us disregard or pay little attention to the thoughts we harbour regarding ourselves. We disregard the identity we attribute to ourselves and we do not realise that this subconsciously affects everything about the way that we live our lives. In my university days, I encountered a number of people who believed that aiming for an A was too high a target. They believed that they did not have the mental capacity to grasp and understand all that they read. Back then, people would tell me, “ND, my brain and yours are not the same. We cannot carry everything on our head.” This always amused me, the fact that they believed that people who aimed for and got As had bigger brains than everyone else or were unusually good at memorising things. As I have said before, I have never seen myself as having an unnaturally big brain. I see myself as an ordinary girl who, when she makes up her mind, can double down and work very hard for the things that she wants. I struggle with learning names and it affected my memory of cases a lot in the university. Did I decide then that I was going to be picky about the cases to learn? No! I decided that I was going to work twice as hard to ensure that I learnt everything that there was to learn.

As I was saying, your identity plays a key role in the way you live your life. If you see yourself as someone without the mental capacity to make a first-class, you won’t. Simple and short. I would advise that you begin to change the narrative that you tell yourself. Tell yourself that you can do anything you put your mind to. You can make a first class. You have the mind of Christ. You have academic dominion. Say that to yourself long enough for your thought patterns to have a total transformation and you will see your actions change slowly but surely. I have a friend whom I have seen this happen to in real life. In her 100 level, she made a low 2.1 because she never thought that she could make a first-class or that she was smart enough to write exams without cheating. However, she encountered the right set of friends from her 200 level onwards and her thinking pattern changed so drastically that not only did she eventually graduate with a first-class, but as the 4^th best graduating student in my class.

YOUR RESILIENCE

At the end of it all, I do believe that resilience plays a key role in emerging with a first class in the university. You have four or five or even six years there. Not all semesters will be nice and favourable. You might have some bad experiences. You might fall sick and get some bad grades. But you must keep pushing. It is possible to rise after falling and you have enough time to correct your mistakes if you have made any. Some semesters, you might get so overwhelmed that you would want to give up. You might find yourself breaking down in tears several times. This is completely normal. But the secret is to keep pushing. Never stop. Write the vision, make it plain and keep pushing till you get the grades you deserve. You can do this. I believe in you.