I didn't plan to blog about the Jodi Arias trial today, but I'm becoming like a crack addict who loses it when her supply has been cut off.
While I hate much of Arizona and everything for which it stands (though I do like Flagstaff), I absolutely love the way their court system allows jurors to submit questions to the judge to witnesses. Today MadameLaviolette answered the questions submitted by the jury.More correctly, the judge read questions as submitted by the jury, and Madame LaViolette spoke after each question was asked. In some cases , what she said had very little to do with the question that was asked. In other cases, she answred a question that was similar to but not the actual question that was asked. In other cases, she restated the question in statement form, then paraphrased the statement aa few times. She must have read the sm book that my cousin gave me right befor I started high school on how to maintain a 4.0 or about without necessarily mastering course material. I wish i could recall the actual title and author of the book.
I never really needed te information in the book my cousin gave me, as I typically did my assigned readings, papers, projects, etc. The information provided in the book helped several of myfriends on more than one occasion, though.
One of the major points of the book is that a teacher, professor, or grader may read the first paper assigned for a course with some degree of attention. It would behoove you to put in the time and effort on that first paper.
After the first essay or research paper, readers/graders/professors are looking for length, format, key phrases, and plagiarism. Make your paper the required length. Don't exceed the required range of length because (A) it draws attention to your paper, and (B) the person charged with reading the papers already has plenty of reading to do. He or she does not want to read War and Peace in the form of your submitted paper.
If you're going to plagiarize, hire a trusted source whom you know won't steal something off the Internet and sell it to you as his or her original work. Cheating is one thing. Outright stupidity is another. Internet programs will catch any plagiarism that has been lifted from a source that has been found on the Internet or submitted to any Internet site.
Follow the assigned format, MLA, APA, or whatever. That's the one thing for which a grader always checks.
After the initial assignment, often a person reading papers merely scans. Be sure to include key words and pertinent phrases, and use them in correct context. Use a glossary at the end of a textbook for a reference, or scan assigned readings for good terms to randomly toss into a paper.
There is an art, as well, to passing tests. The ideaof always choosing B or Con multiple choice tests isn't as fool-proof as it once was. Professors and teachers have actually gotten wise to that. Instead, out of the four or five possibilities, at least two will be ridiculous. Both "all of the above" and none of the aobve" are popular answers, and it should be obvious which is correct: in the former instance, the answers will be sensible but overly simplified; in the latter instance, one or two answers may appear to make sense until you read closely, ut at least one or two will be very silly rendering an "all of the above" answer implausible.
You'll face more multiple choice answers in high school or junior college than in four-year college or university. That's because teachers/professors are inherently lazy, but if they have underlings onto which to dump the labor, essay questions become a much more attractive test option for the professors. The keys here are many. For one, the teaching assistant usually has office hours just as the professor does. Visit the teaching assistant; don't make a total pest of yourself, but let him or her know you value his or her input.
When actually taking the test, if you know the correct answer, state it as clearly and eloquently yet concisely as possible. Spelling, grammar, and usage do matter. A tiny typographical error (laptops are often used now for university tests) will be overlooked, but writing as though you were home-schooled by a person who couldn't make it through eighth grade somewhere in the Ozarks will not escape the notice of the T.A. Even if your answer is, in principle, correct, its correctness will most likely be lost somewhere in the translation.
When taking the test, if you do not know the answer, this is where you can learn from Madame LaViolette. Option A is to answer a question similar to the one asked if you are capable of answering a similar questionear all along even if it wasn't the question that was asked. Option B, if you're slightly more desperate, is to restate the question in statement form in about four different varieties. An alert grader will catch this but may not give a raccoon's anus, or may feel sorry for you, or may give you more credit than for which you are legitimately entitled for creativity and perseverence. Again, this is where your occasional visits dring office hours may pay off in the dividend. Good looks and/or charm and/or simply kissing up may be worth more points on an essay question than one might think.
If the question is such that you neither know the answer, can't write the asnwer to similar question,a d for some unexplained reason cannot restate the question instatement form (perhaps you're suffering from temporary aphasia) write about another topic you know to be near and dear to the professor and/or grader's heart. just a little ingenuity can tie your treatise to the assigned topic or question even if only slightly. If you make the point the professor or grader really wanted to hear espite what the assigned topic or question posed, you will score points.
The bottom line is that ever professor has a point of view. His T.A. has been apprised of this point of view. He or she has something that he wishes to impart to students, and he wishes to have it restated in every paper or exam. Find out what that pearl of wisdom is. tell it to him or her at every opportunity. You will win the game of higher education if you succeed in doing this.
Regarding Madame LaViolette, I'm confident she either read or wrote the book to which I referred earlier. She's playing the game well in some respects -- answering parallel questions,restating the question in statement form, changing the topic and working in the key terms, and going off on tangents so far from the topic that only the closest of listeners will really believe that she would actually digress to the degree tat she did; they assume there must have been a connection that they missed. The only way she may not ultimately prevail in this battel of witnesses (notice that I said the only way she may not prevail; her client, on the other hand has roughly the same chance of a clear acuittal that I have of becoming a Playboy ccnterfold in 2013, and I'm still a AA cup.) is that she hitched her wagon to a client who has no better than a snowball's chances in hell of being liked by a jury. Furthrmore, while Madame LaViolette herself may have come across as somewhat likeable early in the trial, her likeability factor is dropping faster than barometric pressure drops as a storm approaches. Furthermore, there's no way around it: her "Snow White as a Battered Woman" presentation was eventually destined to see the light of day, and anything long those lines not clearly labeled as fiction couldinvariably impact the credibility of the author only in a very bad way.
alexisar.blogspot.comI'm still waiting to hear how Humpty Dumpty figures into the scenario.
If, and this is a big if, I ever become an attorney, I plan to take the Arizona Bar Exam, provided Arizona does not have bar status reciprocity with California (and I could never be so lucky). I intend to go to Arizona during a vacaton time and take on a fairly boring case, pro bono if necessary, just to see how long I could get the case to drag on. Even though Jodi Arias and Travis Alexander are not the names of people who are or were famous prior to this trial, it is a capital murder case with a great deal of sensationalism attached to it due to the gruesomeness of the crime and the relative slowness of news in general at this particular time. That by itself could lend length of time to the trial. still, my mom was on a jury panel for a first-degree murder that concluded in less than ten days, jury deliberation time included. This trial is dragging.
My plan isto go to Arizona and defend an accused prostitute or someone similarly accused. My goal will be to drag the trial out as long as is humanly possible, to the extent, if such a thing is able to be included, of making it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest trial in the U.S. for a misdemeanor.
All of this talk of guinness reminds me that it is time for one of my 2.5 half-bottles of Guinness per week.
# the non-artist still known as Alexis
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