To the person who came here by googling jerk boyfriend bar exam:

If your boyfriend is being a jerk and is about to take the bar exam, cut him some slack. It's incredibly stressful. He'll go back to normal somewhere around Thursday or Friday of this week.

If you're taking the bar exam and your boyfriend is being a jerk to you, dump him. He ought to be a little more understanding about how incredibly stressful it is.

That's Katze, Esq., Thank You Very Much

I passed the bar exam! I can't freaking believe it, but I passed the bar exam! And if you'll all excuse me, there's a bit of Chimay waiting for me down at our favorite bar.

Priorities In Order? Check.

How did it go, you ask?

I wouldn't say that it was the worst two days of my life, but it definitely ranks in the Top 10. I felt that this administration was significantly harder than the summer administration. In particular-- and maybe it's just me, since I can't really quantify why I feel this way-- I thought the MBE was very, very different in tone, in question structure, and in content than last time. Fallout from the whole "PMBR is stealing our questions" thing?

But who cares? I found my wedding dress!

I swear to you, I didn't intend to actually buy anything. Hulio and I had planned to try on dresses to see which style(s) suit me best, and then I wanted to buy it online, either via Craigslist (Oh Motherlode of All Things Good and Often Cheap), or direct from the Chinese sweatshops that supply gowns to retailers here in the U.S., thanks to the magic of eBay. So I didn't even make any special monetary arrangements or take along my checkbook when we headed out on Friday morning.

But let me back up.

I took the bar on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday morning, I got up early, did my dishes, ate breakfast, packed my suitcase, gathered my dirty laundry, cleaned my bedroom and bathroom, changed the cat's litter and washed her food and water bowls, loaded the suitcase and laundry (God, I love free washing machines!) into the car, drove over to Ash's, where I picked up the materials for my Save the Dates, my invitations, and my laptop, plus my library books, drove over to the library to return those books and pick up the stuff that I had on hold there. I was on the road by 2 p.m., and I drove almost straight through, in a hurry to get to My Hometown in time to surprise my grandmother at their Thursday night fellowship group. She's had two knee replacements in the past year or so, and they recently found a massive infection in her newest knee, so she was hauled in for not-quite-an-emergency-but-you-really-don't-want-to-wait surgery, and now she's in the midst of a very intense course of antibiotics. Once the infection gets stomped by drugs, she has to go back for another knee. You can imagine how happy this makes her, especially since she's in her 80's, so this is not exactly minor surgery for her. The last two hours of the drive involved a driving rainstorm with gusting wind, and you can imagine how happy that made me.

Nonetheless, I was up bright and early Friday morning to meet Hulio for a daylong trek to look for The Perfect Dress. We hit my favorite place for breakfast first, and I gorged on a crepe with turkey, mushrooms, and avocado, doused in Hollandaise. Mmmmm... mushrooms... hollandaise... I simply don't understand people who skip breakfast. How could you miss out on a meal with so many delicious possibilities? And then we were off to the store where her sister had bought a wedding dress years earlier. We wanted to start there for several reasons, including it's location in the local "wedding district", the fact that it's a locally owned business, and the insane number of gowns on the premises. It seemed like a good strategic decision.

I was a little apprehensive about this part of the wedding planning, having learned a lot about the industry and its deceptive practices in my research, and having heard many, many stories by other women I know who were treated unbelievably badly by the staff at wedding shops. The practices are nearly unbelievable in their nastiness and dishonesty, with the attitude seeming to be "Repeat customers? We don't need no steenking repeat customers!". But I know that not every business is run that way, and I heard some wonderful stories (though, it is worth noting, not nearly as many as the bad stories) about kind salespeople and lovely dresses at decent prices as well. I hoped for goodness and didn't stress it too much, because, hey! I wasn't going to buy a dress yet, anyway!

We were assigned to a saleswoman and she led us back through the racks-- the rows and rows and rows of racks!-- of dresses, asking about the wedding date and location and my budget. I told her that I didn't want to spend much more than $400-- a ridiculously low amount of money for a wedding dress. She didn't bat an eye. Instead, she said, "Well, then let's start with this rack here", and showed us to a rack of discontinued samples that were being sold at clearance. Excellent! Poised at the head of the very long row of plastic sheathed dresses, she asked me what kind of dress I had in mind, and I, never having been the kind of girl who dreamed about her wedding and planned the exact details years before she got engaged, answered "Not strapless." I thought about it for a moment and added "And no huge train." "Okay!" she answered, and we all dove into the racks.

I could not believe how heavy the dresses were. I mean, I sort of knew that they are basically a huge mound of fabric held together with a few tons of beads and sequins and such, but it didn't really sink in until I was feeling the ache in my arms before we were half way down the first rack.
Wow, are there some ugly dresses out there. Hulio and I have a pact: no butt bows, ever. And it is our sworn duty as best friends to smack the other across the face, ridicule her in front of others, even rip the nasty thing off if necessary. Therefore, there was lots of superfluous giggling whenever we saw a butt bow. Several times, we got all excited about a fabric or a detail only to have the image shattered when we pulled the dress from the rack only to find that it had some other fatal flaw. Still, in short order we'd pulled about six dresses from the rack and handed them over to our saleswoman. By that time, my arms were tired and the dresses were starting to look a little alike, so the executive decision was made to try on what we had and take it from there.

Back in the dressing room, the saleswoman complimented my breasts (Me: "Hehehe. Thanks! They're natural!" No, not really. I mean, yes, they really are natural, but I didn't say that. I just laughed and mumbled something non-commital.), and helped me put on the first dress... and I couldn't get it off fast enough. It was, ummmm, a little slinkier than I'd planned to wear for my church wedding. After that, though, we found something we liked about every dress, but none was perfect. If only I could have the fabric from #2 and the neckline from #3 and the skirt from #4... I stepped into the last of the batch and Hulio helped the saleswoman muscle the bodice closed and I turned on the pedestal toward the mirror, and suddenly I was a bride.

I looked at Hulio and said "I am so getting married!" and she said "Yes, you are!" and I started to cry and then the saleswoman brought out a veil and headpiece to try on and holy cow y'all, I am going to get married in just a few months! And I'm going to wear this gorgeous dress! As Hulio put it, it's exactly like me, exactly the sort of thing I would wear. The outside is organza with tiny little beaded flowers all down the bodice and into the skirt. There is a row of buttons down the back and a modest train with more tiny flowers all cascading along the folds.

The best part is, it fit. Almost perfectly. The straps-- it has spaghetti straps, if you didn't guess by the lead-in to this sentence-- will need to be shortened by about 1 cm, and I'll probably need a small dart under each armpit. Oh, and one of the little eyehooks is missing. And because it was the discontinued sample, it was $199. Plus sales tax. Original price $1075. I am the Queen of Wedding Bargains.

Hulio helped me start another wedding bargain I've been itching to work on: my Save the Date cards. I bought every package of dark blue cards from the Target clearance section, and scoured the internet for the perfect stamp. The result:
Well, apparently Blogger (Motto: "We put the 'free' in 'are you freaking kidding me?!'") doesn't want you guys to see any of this, so you will just have to trust me for now: they are sweet.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

I'm going to take another whack at this bar exam thingie again. I don't really feel any better about it this time than I did last time. In fact, I feel a lot worse. My brain seems to see the material as a terrible infection that it must reject as quickly as possible. I don't blame my brain; frankly, that's pretty much how I felt about most of law school. It's not that I don't understand the material*: each individual piece makes perfect sense**, and if I'm allowed to refer to the notes before beginning my analysis, I can rock the IRAC with the best of them (as evidenced by my superb score on the performance exam and my solid performance on the essay portion of the exam). But as soon as my brain is asked to memorize the material, things go all to pot with an alarming speed. This does not bode well for a different outcome on the MBE.

Case in point: I feel better about Evidence this time, despite my continued struggle to apply the concepts behind impeachment properly. I understand some of the concepts that used to be a tangled web of Professor Feedback insanity, and I've made some of the connections to Criminal Procedure that I never saw when Professor Feedback taught either of those courses. But I have more trouble trying to remember which things are non-hearsay and which are hearsay exceptions than is reasonable for anyone who finished law school with respectable, if mediocre, grades. I know that a given piece of evidence is or isn't admissible, but if the question has a choice between "admissible because it's nonhearsay" or "admissible because it is a hearsay exception", I am reduced to the proverbial coin toss, and unless Luck is an extraordinarily kind lady over the next couple of days, that's not a very good strategy for passing.

So I study and I freak out, and today I'm not taking a break as the conventional wisdom advises, but I am going to read through my notes one more time and review con law, which I haven't touched since the summer. That's actually the only subject that worries me for the essays. I'm doing pretty well on the MBE practice questions despite my lack of review, but honestly, Comrade Verne's class is a distant memory and I don't really remember which test goes with which concept with any degree of accuracy. That's easy to fake on the MBE, but not so easy to fake when you've got to write a coherent essay.

Also? For anyone who might stumble across this blog and contemplate taking/ retaking the bar while working full time. Oh. My. God. If you can avoid it, DON'T DO IT. It's been incredibly difficult to study effectively and even to find motivation to study after a long day of work. When I was waitressing, I thought it would be easier once I had a set schedule and wasn't doing such physically demanding work. Then I got the office job and found it difficult to carve out the time when there are so many other things demanding my attention in the evenings and on weekends. I got in a few pages of review here and there, but it wasn't until I took the past week off work that I found myself able to really concentrate and get work done.

And then there is that tiny little matter of no longer really wanting to practice law. I've got a job interview in an hour***, and a couple of other promising leads, and not one of them has "licensed to practice law" as one of the job requirements. I'm torn between really wanting this particular job because it sounds interesting and because it's a job with the federal government (and I'm really kind of in love with the idea of working for the government at least for a little while, while I'm still idealistic enough to believe that I can do some good in the world via government work), and not wanting it because it's not in DC and it's kind of really crappy pay**** for the type of work and the skill set they're looking for. But I think that if I get hired for one job, it will be easier to find another job in a different office, either in the same agency or in a different agency. Or that's what they tell me, anyway.

So, to summarize: freaking out, job interview, bar exam, existential angst over career. I think I need another pot of coffee.

* Except for impeachment. I just don't really understand the practical application of the theories behind it, no matter how many times I review it. I think it's time to just let go and leave those questions to chance.
** Except for impeachment. The explanations in the back of the MBE practice books don't make it any clearer either.
*** Which I almost forgot! Thank God it's a phone interview, so I can "attend" it in my pjs with unwashed hair and no make up.
**** Not that I expect to get rich working for the government. But even for government work, it's pretty crappy pay.

I Think They're Calling Us Stupid

Direct quote from the application for my state's bar exam:

"Do you claim exclusive citizenship to a country other than the United States of America? (If you are a citizen of the United States of America, answer No.)"

I guess they don't think the average American bar applicant has the reading comprehension skillz to decipher that without the additional assistance?

And yes, that means I failed the bar. I didn't blog about it for a while because I wanted to sort out my feelings on the whole mess and get past the really raw emotion stage of things. It helps that I passed the state portion with no problem, scoring about the same on every essay-- so I didn't have any particular weak spots there. However, I failed the Multistate Bar Exam by a handful of points. Interestingly enough, I did respectably well in four of the subject areas-- and totally bombed the two subjects for which I had Professor Feedback. One of those subjects (Evidence) was the one that made me physically ill every time I sat down to study it this summer. There were several days that I got completely derailed by the panic induced by my recognition of my complete lack of comprehension of the subject. So you can imagine how very much I'm looking forward to spending the next several months having another go at it!

A couple of my friends told me that they thought it would be worse to fail the bar exam by just a couple of points than to totally bomb it. In the time between the day the list of passing people were posted online and the day my detailed results arrived in my mailbox, I had plenty of time to ponder the question, and I would like to say that it feels much better to have just barely failed. At least I don't feel totally overwhelmed. My weak spot(s) are glaring, and I was strong enough on the remaining part of the exam to feel pretty confident in passing the next time around. But man am I angry that I have to take the whole stupid thing over again. I passed the state part! I shouldn't have to slog through it again just because I suck enough at Evidence to fail the MBE!

I guess at least I have something to do with all of my "free time" for the next couple of months.

Taking the Bar, Part One

The Monday before the bar exam was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I cried off and on all day from sheer nervousness, and in between crying jags, I was overcome by long periods of zen-like calm in which I *knew* that I will fail and *accepted* that fact. Everyone always advises you to take Monday off, or at least to take it easy, but I thought I'd be better served by having things as fresh in my mind as possible, so I took Sunday off instead. The weather over the weekend was wonderful, and it was nice to get a chance to enjoy it a little. Still, on Monday I found myself trying to read outlines for Contracts, Civil Procedure, Property, Evidence, and Criminal Procedure-- the subjects that I considered my weakest-- and feeling doomed, utterly doomed.

I went to bed around 11 p.m., hoping that I'd worn myself out enough to just fall asleep. In fact, I felt bone tired, and when I collapsed into bed, I felt as though I was sinking into the mattress-- a sensation familiar from my college years when I was working at least 45 hours a week while carrying a full course load. Back then, if I felt that sensation when I laid down on my bed, I knew that I needed to stand up immediately or else I would fall asleep in a matter of minutes. Over the years, I came to think of that feeling as my warning system, telling me that exhaustion was very close to taking over, and I should try to cut something less important from my schedule so that I could catch an hour or two of sleep as soon as possible. So Monday night, that feeling was actually quite welcome. I thought it meant I'd drop off from sheer exhaustion and that would be that.

Haaaaaa haaaaaahahahahahahahhaha!

I laid in bed, caught in that place between awake and asleep for hours. At 2 a.m., I got up to go to the bathroom. At 4 a.m., I got up to find out why Ash hadn't come to bed (he was working on a deadline). Finally, around 5 a.m., I fell asleep... and at 6 a.m., the alarm went off. A quick shower helped drag me into the land of the living and the very strong cup of coffee that I drank while eating breakfast and reviewing Estates and Trusts notes didn't hurt either, but I was quite worried that I might actually fall asleep during the exam. It was one thing to go to school on 3 hours of sleep when I was 23. It's another thing to try and take the bar on 1 hour when I am 30. I cannot function on less than 7 hours anymore, I'm just too old! Then I read my Professional Responsibility notes while scarfing cereal and it was time to catch the bus.

The bar was being administered at the convention center. I know how to get there in a car, but given the levels of road rage I experience every time I try to drive during rush hour in this city and the sorry state of parking in the downtown area, I thought it better to take the bus. So on Monday night, I went to the port authority website to look up which bus to take. Imagine my surprise when I was told that there is no way to get from here to there! I tried the convention center website, hoping that they, like many places nowadays, might include a blurb like "This location is served by the following bus lines: 1, 53, 5, 39, 60, 48" or whatever. Nope. Next, I tried looking up the convention center as a bus stop on the port authority website. Nope. Finally, after a bit of sleuthing, I found that the bus that stops at the head of my street-- you know, the major busline that runs from the east suburbs to downtown? The one to (or from) which you can transfer from a million other bus lines?-- would take me straight there and let me off about a block from the convention center. But there's no route, according to the port authority, that runs from my neighborhood to the convention center with 3 transfers or less and a destination stop 1/2 mile or less from the convention center.

Anyway, the bus ride there was uneventful and I arrived at the convention center by 7:20 a.m. It seemed so strange to be riding with a bus full of people for whom this was just another work day, not the culmination of years of education and weeks of intense study, a day that could make or break their next career step. It reminded me quite a lot of when I was in Germany for Thanksgiving and everyone was just off to school and work, like every day, and I was feeling incredibly homesick, knowing that back home, my whole family was going to be getting together for dinner at my aunt's farm, without me.

I'd left a little early because the schedule said that I'd arrive at that stop by 7:38, so that left me enough room for error that I didn't have to stress. Instead, there I was, with 35 minutes to kill. Yes, 35 minutes; we were to report to our room at 7:55 a.m. It was kind of weird walking down the sidewalk with a stream of other applicants, everyone vibrating with nerves and/or fear. We proceeded up a series of escalators to a huge, open lobby area slowly filling with people, some of them milling about, chatting to their friends, sharing stories of last minute meltdowns, while others poured over notes one last time. I promptly ran into two of the three members of my 1L study group, and instantly, my nerves disappeared. I can't explain it. It's not like I was putting on a calm front to impress them: they witness all of my 1L freak outs, so it's a little too late to pretend that stuff like this doesn't bother me. It was just that all of a sudden, the bar exam didn't seem to be anything more than one more law school hoop. I'd take a leap and hope to pass through, but if I don't, oh well! A disappointingly low part of me is wrapped up in the idea of being a lawyer or even a law student. This is good because it's kept me nominally sane. It's bad because I haven't really ever caught the study-till-you-drop train.

Anyway, those 35 minutes flew by and suddenly we were being called into the computer based testing room. It was part of an enormous ballroom with a cavernous ceiling, and at first glance, the lighting seemed strange and dim. I was all set to get irritated, but once you got into the room, it actually wasn't bad at all. My seat turned out to be in the very last row, just in front of the proctors' table. I couldn't have asked for anything better: no distractions, no people walking past, and the proctors so close that I don't have to wait for their help if I need it. The girl seated directly in front of me was chatting with her tablemate, telling him that she and her husband had come up from Virginia, and for some reason, that was the first moment that it really hit me that there were lots of people there from somewhere else. I don't know why that never really occurred to me, because as soon as I thought of it, it was like "duh!". Still, at that moment it was totally a revelation to me.

The morning session was the Performance Test and the first two essays (each of which had 4 subparts), for which we had 3 hours total. Dirty Birdie and I had been joking on Monday about how we were sure to pass because of the sheer numbers of people we had praying for us. Specifically, I had been praying that the topics would be things that I knew about. The PT was based on the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, which we covered extensively in Elder Law. Now, you aren't supposed to rely on your own knowledge of the law, but rather on the materials you are given in the file library in composing the item they request. But still, it was nice not to start the day in an unfamiliar area.

I was pounding away on the keyboard, and in the back of my head, I felt that I was rocking the PT. Then I looked up and realized that I had already used nearly 2 hours on just that. Damn. I moved on to the essays and was pleasantly surprised to find that I could articulate *something* on each of them. I was unpleasantly surprised to find that two of the eight subparts asked about Federal Income Taxation, aka, "The Only Subject I Didn't Study Because Everyone Said They Never Ask About It". And lord knows I didn't learn anything in Professor MacPherson's class. I didn't get much written, given that I really only had an hour to do what I really should have had 1 1/2 hours for-- entirely my fault, but still. Nonetheless, I think I at least got a rule, an issue, and some analysis for everything. I can't remember whether I was stating full conclusions or not by that point. I think I may have been able to go back and add them to one or two things, but I figured the analysis was more important. Still, when they called "Time!", I'd answered everything.

At some point during the morning, I had to leave the room to go to the bathroom.

I ate lunch with Dirty Birdie and a friend of hers. I'd packed one of those little insulated lunchbags with an enormous amount of food because I was afraid that I'd get the growlies and not be able to concentrate. As a side note? I bought Frappucinos to take along for a caffeine boost in the afternoon. When I stopped at Target, they didn't have the caramel ones I favor, so I thought I'd just run over to the Horribly Overpriced Chain Store and buy them. I thought they'd be maybe a dollar more expensive. When I got there, I discovered that they were $2.70 more expensive. AND they didn't have caramel either. I stopped back at Target on my way home and got the vanilla flavored ones instead. Some of the men either had really huge appetites or no access to normal lunchboxes because at least three people had brought their lunch in those big styrofoam coolers you use to take beer on a fishing trip. I overheard many, many people telling their friends that they had difficulty finishing because they struggled with timing. That made me feel a little better about my PT-heavy morning.

The next thing I knew, they were calling us back in. We had a bit of a wait this time because the applicants taking the bar on their computers were required to be there early just in case there were any problems, and during the very boring wait I began to nurse an admittedly unreasonable hatred for the guy sitting four rows ahead of me wearing a BarBri shirt with the motto "Do It Once, Do It Right, Never Do It Again". The shirt seemed to be taunting me with its message, whispering to my insecurities, telling them that everyone else but me knows what they're doing.

The afternoon essays included the only two things that I didn't actually know, but in both cases, I thought that the issue they were heading toward was pretty obvious and made up a rule based on that. I know that in at least one of the two cases I was either right or very, very close to it, so hopefully that bodes well for my chances of success. Time was still a problem, though not the critical issue that it had been in the morning. I suppose that there's always just a little more you would have liked to added or a section that you might have liked to reword. In many cases, I felt that my answers were really more "short answer" than "essay", and I'm pretty sure that they were more IRA than IRAC. Still, I don't think I did too badly.

I couldn't believe how quickly the day went. I'd expected it to feel like a marathon, but it wasn't that bad. Not that it was easy, by any stretch of the imagination. But I didn't feel my energy flagging, even though I was working on next to no sleep. Ahhhh, adrenaline is a wonderful thing. When they called time, I stopped typing in the middle of a word, properly frightened by the dire warnings before each section about how refual to stop writing or typing on command would be "considered a serious character issue" and promptly "reported to the Bar". I think I got the main points all covered, though, and was only fleshing things out by that point. There was one question on the afternoon portion that I really didn't know, but I think I made a good guess and a decent analysis based on that guess.

It took forever to get a bus home because the busses kept passing me by, crammed full with people. I finally got on one, and even managed to get a seat a few stops down the line-- thank GOD, because I was starting to feel a little unsteady on my feet as the adrenaline started to ebb. I was sitting there, staring off into space and thinking about how much I wanted to see Ash and how much I wanted to sleep, when the guy sitting next to me asked "Are you French?"

I goggled at him in disbelief. See, this question is a bit of an inside joke with Hulio. We were at a concert once when a guy used this question as a pick up line, sending the two of us into gales of laughter. Since then, it's been our code for cheesy pick up lines and the guys that use them.

He must have sensed my... confusion, because he guestured toward my chest and said "Your sticker-- is it French?". I looked down and realized that I was still wearing the admission sticker they'd given us that morning, and that in some universe there might be a way in which the abbreviations on it could be construed to be French...-ish. So I laughed a little and explained that, no, it was just the admission sticker from the bar exam, as I peeled it off and stuck it inside my laptop bag. He immediately jumped on that, snagging the "honor" of becoming the very first person to ask "Did you pass?". I controlled the impulse to roll my eyes, since he obviously had no idea how obnoxious that question is for bar takers. I kind of chuckled about how I still had another day to go, so it was too soon to guess, and we talked about licensing exams for the next 10 minutes, until he got off, wishing me good luck for the next day. I thought that was very kind, and it really boosted my mood, which was teetering on the edge of a breakdown by that point.

Finally, finally, I got to Ash's place and took a very long nap. We ate dinner and I reviewed my Contracts and Evidence outlines... getting ready for the MBE.

Post-Bar Life, Day 1

I slept for 12 glorious hours last night and napped twice today. I did NOT read or study. I played Super Mario World and played with my poor neglected cat. I soaked in the tub. I ate pancakes for breakfast/lunch and didn't feel guilty about taking the time to make them. Also? I cleaned my toilet and started cleaning my bedroom. My apartment is so filthy right now that it smells bad. I plan to rectify that toot sweet.

I wonder how long it will take before I stop feeling like I have to study all the time? When will I stop thinking of things in terms of the bar exam? And HOLY COW how did it get to be almost AUGUST already??

OK, So I Lied About The Not Blogging Thing

It's just that I'm ready to puke and I need a break, and suddenly I have lots of stuff to say because, well, I'm a master at the art of avoidance.

Plus it's lunchtime and this looks really yummy, even though it would kill me.

Please Stop The Clock

One week from right this minute, I will be 40 minutes into the Multistate Bar Examination and the essay portion will be ancient history. Well, recent history. I don't know if I'll have much time for blogging between now and then, plus I imagine that y'all don't really want to read my musings on venue and intervention of right, or on future interests (kill me now, please). BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD! MINIMUM CONTACTS! COMPELLING GOVERNMENT INTEREST! INTENT FOLLOWS THE BULLET! BREACH OF DUTY! That's what my thought patterns pretty much look like right now, interspersed with hysterical sobs.

My plan is as follows: One last review of the essay topics, then the entire weekend will be practice MBE. I'm hoping (praying) to rock the MBE so hard that they won't even look at my essays, since I'm pretty sure that will be the only way I can pass, barring divine intervention. Monday, I'm going to shop for lunch stuff, so that I don't have to try and buy something with the other 2 million bar takers in my 40 minute lunch break. I also need earplugs. Tuesday is the essays, and I'll probably blow through the super condensed version of the MBE outlines for Evidence and Property before bed that night (by far my weakest topics), just for a little refresher. Wednesday, the MBE. Then I will come home, drink beer, and go to bed. Thursday, I will sleep until I get a headache and drink some more. I'm hoping to drive the memory of this hellish summer out of my head because dear Lord.

So, to Dirty Birdie, Catherine, my dear friend N in California, and Jill, as well as any other bar takers who are reading this blog, but I'm just too fried to remember:

Good luck!!!!

Check back next Friday, when I will hopefully be awake and my brain will be semi-functioning again.

I Just Might Be Losing It

Question for Ash and the Dirty Birdie... and anyone else who had the same professor for Crim Law:

If, on the bar exam, I would happen to write something about possession of "schmocaine", how good do you suppose the odds are that the person grading my exam will get the reference and will it work in my favor or not?

Just Think What I'll Be Like Two Weeks From Now

The closer I get to the bar exam, the more my hatred for people who cut their grass or whack their weeds with a noisy gas-powered tool grows. Especially for the jackass down the street who is using an ancient asthmatic lawnmower that keeps sputtering and wheezing and almost dying, then roaring back for a few brief moments of earsplitting grass cutting, followed by more sputtering and wheezing until it just stops every ninety seconds or so. Then Mr. Lawnmowing Jackass spends several minutes trying in vain to restart the mower, which, if it were alive, would surely have been sent to hospice by now and given medication to keep it comfortable until it dies. The lawns here are postage stamp sized, so really, he could bring a pair of toenail clippers or kitchen shears outside and be done faster and with considerably less damage to the quality of air-- and life-- around the neighborhood.

Also, I am really starting to hate the lawn care company that my landlord hired to mow the patch around our building. I know, I know: no one wants to work in the heat of the day. I get it. Truly, I do. And I even sympathize. But! 7:27 a.m. is TOO EARLY to rev up your mowers! I would think, given the ever sinking price of non-gas models and the ever increasing price of gas, more of these companies would be switching to electric or manual mowers. It would be a win-win situation! No noise, no noxious smell (because nothing makes my morning coffee taste better than a healthy dose of exhaust fumes just outside my windows-- on both sides of the apartment at once, because one crew is in front and the other in back), lower fuel costs, and no appreciable change in labor costs. At least, that's what I gather from the people I've spoken to who've switched to electric or manual mowers for their own lawns. Of course, if you're mowing an enormous area, that wouldn't be feasible, but again, most of the lawns in this area are not rolling acres of green. They're not even the kind of lawn I grew up with, which was big enough for a swingset and a small aboveground pool, but not much more. Totally do-able with an electric or manual mower.

Back, semi-ironically, to studying for property, a.k.a. "My Worst 1L Class". I cannot WAIT to never think too closely about vested remainders and the effing rule against perpetuities again.

I'm, Like, Really Going to Take This Exam

My admission ticket came in the mail today.

Along with the admission ticket, we also received a schedule. I was horrified to learn that we get only 40 minutes for lunch. Would it kill them to make it a full 45 minutes, especially given that all 5,000 of us will be descending on the same set of restaurants during the same 40 minute period along with all of the worker bees from the downtown area. It could take 30 of those 40 minutes to get your hands on food to begin with.

Also, we got a list of permissible and impermissible things on exam day. I was relieved to learn that we can, in fact, use earplugs. I tend to become hypersensitive when I am freaking out, so I could imagine myself fixating on some particularly loud typer, much like I fixated on the jerk from the Other Law School who sat in the row in front of us during PMBR and typed so forcefully that I really thought his laptop ought to stop working altogether. We are not allowed to wear baseball caps, fashion hats, or hoods of any sort, unless they are religious in nature and approved by the board of examiners. We are also, contrary to the advice of the PMBR rep, allowed to bring drinks in, so long as they are in containers that can be completely resealed. We are not, however, allowed to bring our laptop bags into the room with us. Instead, we have to leave them out in the lobby of the convention center. I will definitely not be taking my very awesome new laptop bag with the pretty dragonflies.

I can't believe this is really real.

Cool as a Cucumber

Blogging has been quite light lately because the only thing going through my head right now is

Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

I am NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT ready for this. I will never be ready for it. I don't want to do it.

Perhaps, just perhaps, if I were, you know, enthusiastic about the idea of being a lawyer, I might feel more motivated to take this exam, and perhaps that motivation might crowd out some of the terror. I am not a stupid person, but I have never been good at memorization, and that's what this stupid test feels like to me: one more contest at church camp to see who can memorize the most bible verses. Any bible verses at all will do, no understanding of their meaning or message is necessary, just be able to spit them out upon command.

Wednesday night was my first real meltdown, complete with tears aplenty. Why, oh why, can't I remember anything about any single subject from one day to the next? What will I do with myself when I am unable to pass the bar because, despite understanding any individual concept when I see it in front of me, the second I have to produce it from memory, I seem to lose all ability to form coherent thought? Poor Ash kept alternating between trying to soothe me and trying to make me laugh, until he asked me mystified why I just kept crying harder. I don't know, maybe it's because if I don't cry, I might start to scream and never stop?

Next week will be better. I know it. Because frankly, if it gets worse, I will end up in an institution before the end of the month. And if there's one thing I learned in Mental Health Law Fall semester, it was that the mental health facilities in this state are HORRIBLE and that resources are severely lacking. In all seriousness, I wish I had gone to the student health center before my coverage ran out to get a prescription for Lunesta or something because I haven't slept well in weeks and will be propping my eyelids open with toothpicks by the time the actual exam rolls around (IN 25 DAYS!!). Or maybe Valium, because the anxiety makes it hard to think.

I keep thinking about the people I know who failed the bar the first time around, and I know another person who still hasn't passed it after multiple attempts. All of them are doing just fine, and they've managed to find work and everything, so logically, I know that it wouldn't be the end of the world if I fail. But to be honest, what makes me sickest of all when I think of failing the bar is the idea of taking it again. I don't know if I can handle this kind of stress again. And I can't imagine how much higher the pressure would be.

Reading back through this post just now, I realize how very un-law student like it is. We all spend so much time trying to pretend that our grades are awesome, our lives are awesome, none of this stress bothers us, of course not! But I cannot possibly be the only person who feels this way. Why do I feel a little bit ashamed of it? Is it just because of the idea that it shows a vulnerability? Or is it because we've all expended so much of our time and energy jostling for position in law school that I feel anxious at the idea of being judged by my peers? I know that this happens, and we've all seen it, and mostly likely participated in it: the results are released and the gossip starts. Who passed? Who didn't? Your friends and the thoughtful contingent-- rare though they often seem to be-- will not think less of you if you should fail the bar. Some of them will be in the same boat with you. As for the rest of them, why should we care what the sociopaths and the mean, bitter element think? Some of the rest of them will end up in that boat, hopefully shutting their pieholes for a little while. And look, there it is: I'm wishing ill on certain people. Why? Do I feel the need to add bad karma to my bad memory? Am I just a bad person? Am I just even crankier than normal because of the stress and the lack of sleep?

Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

25 more days... and 27 days from now, I can sleep for days and hide the stupid bar books in a closet until the results come out. I should start stockpiling the vodka now.

Better Than I Expected

I just got my first assignment back from MicroMash, and I am solidly average. According to my mentor, I got the substantive law right-- with one exception, where I totally missed the point of the question-- but I missed points for not clearly articulating the rules before I applied them. So, rock on! I'm not below average!

Well, That's the $64,000 Question, Isn't It?

My sister just sent me an email:

"Hey Sis,

Can you explain tort law to me?

Thanks,

Amy"


Heh. I guess we'll find that out long about July 25th and 26th or so.

Bar Review, Day 25

I had a whole bunch of droll little observations to post yesterday, but Blogger was having, shall we say, "issues" for the second day in a row, and I didn't write them down because of course I was going to remember them, they were so droll! So funny! And now I've forgotten them because I am obsessed by one thought and one thought only:

The new H&M opens today! TODAY!

And I forgot about it until I just saw an ad in the local alternative paper. I wonder, if I were to go down to the new store and take my corporations outline with me, if I could still be one of the first 100 people in line to get in. If I didn't have to go alone, I might actually chance it. But I don't really want to be by myself in that kind of a hullabaloo. PLUS WHICH, I really ought to be studying corporations, because obviously I need to take another hit to my self esteem. It wasn't nearly battered enough by my utter failure to learn Conflicts of Law, despite an entire semester spent in a very rigorous class and three days of reading the outlines.

I did not learn anything at all in three years of law school. Except that a) you shouldn't steal from you clients, b) you shouldn't sleep with your clients-- unless you have a pre-existing sexual relationship, and c) intent follows the bullet. That's it. WAIT! No, d) promise + consideration = contract.

Gggggrrrrrrrkkkkkkkhhhhhhh.

Bar Review, Day 24

The neighbors are jackhammering.

The neighbors.
Are.
Jackhammering.

Oh, god, how can I learn Conflicts of Law when they are JACKHAMMERING??

A Not So Ringing Endorsement

I decided for a whole host of reasons not to do BarBri for my bar prep. Instead, I chose MicroMash. I placed my order just after finals ended and requested standard delivery because I figured I wouldn't be ready to start on it until after PMBR anyway. So I didn't think too much of it when it didn't come during the PMBR week or the week before graduation-- they did, after all, say 7-10 days. So I called them finally, to be told that UPS was showing that the package had already been delivered. I assured them that it hadn't. They said "OK. We'll send it again. Overnight." That was last Thursday afternoon, and as I am no idiot, I realized that "overnight" would actually mean "on Monday", what with pick up times and the weekend and all.

So I've sat on my butt all day today. I haven' t had a shower yet, because god forbid I not be able to run to the door when the UPS guy gets here.

10 minutes ago, I got an email telling me that my order had been shipped and is due for delivery tomorrow.

Tomorrow. Tuesday. Something like 19 days after I first ordered the course and three business days after I was told my order would be sent to me overnight.

So I called MicroMash. And got voicemail. Screw that. I called back and chose the option for "place an order", since most places make darn tootin' to have someone staffing that line. The guy looked me up and said, "Yes, I show that it took us a little more time than normal to get your order out.It should be delivered tomorrow."

Why? What happened?

"Well, we're really busy right now."

Yeah. No duh! So one might assume that you'd have extra staff or something-- and maybe they do!-- and also that a)screwed up orders might get priority over everyone else, and b)you might not tell people by phone AND BY EMAIL (the original confirmations sent last Thursday, not the email of 10 minutes ago) that the order will arrive on Monday when you won't even manage to get it out your door until then.

"Well, we didn't charge you for the overnight shipping."

Really? Because I know most companies would make a customer pay for re-shipping a shipment that never arrived. So I'm like, totally grateful, and not at all pissed off now.

I can hardly freaking wait to get my hands on the materials now.

Excuse me, I'm off to study my notes from PMBR again.

Does Getting Fired From a Crappy Job Make Me Unfit to Practice Law?

One of the questions on the character portion of the bar application asks if you have ever been terminated from a job, or permitted to resign in lieu of termination. I had to answer that one "yes".

See, one of the crappy, crappy jobs I held in college was one working as a customer service representative for a certain makeup company lampooned in Edward Scissorhands. They opened a brand new central phone center just north of my hometown, offered "flexible" scheduling, full benefits, and started at $10 per hour, which sounded like a princely sum after two years of working at the cemetery for $8 an hour. This was around the time that I needed a full time job that would have evening and weekend hours so that I could start knocking out some of my gen ed requirements, many of which met in the middle of the day, making it difficult to schedule my classes and continue to work at the cemetery without getting fired for excessive absences.

At the interview, I was assured that, because the center was open from 6 am until Midnight, six days a week, as well as from 9 am until 6 pm on Sundays, I could schedule my work hours around my classes, no problem. That was only the first of many, many lies the Company From Hell told.

The stress of that job was unreal. Looking back on it, I can't believe I stayed there more than two months-- and the only reason I'd have stayed that long is because we had six weeks of training, then two weeks of supervised call taking on the floor before we were turned loose. I regularly went home in tears, cried more than once while on the phone (this was where I learned how to cry silently; I doubt any of the customers who made me cry or got me on the phone after a bad call ever knew.), developed an honest-to-god ulcer, started taking Prilosec, started having anxiety attacks, and ended up on Prozac for a while.

Our customers there were not the people who actually bought the products, but the saleswomen (and a handful of salesmen) who sold the product. And the callers fell into three groups: the good, the mean, and the stupid. The good ones were perfectly normal people who had legitimate problems with an order or a product and needed our help to fix it. They were patient and did not yell at us for a UPS driver who left a box at the wrong house or a product that looked different in the catalog than in real life. They had their ducks in a row, gave us the information we needed to fix the problem, said please and thank you, and were less than 10% of the callers because The Company makes it very easy for their salespeople to resolve most problems without needing to contact the customer service center.

The mean ones were the ones who needed to scream and yell and call us names and be abusive for one reason or another. Sometimes, I'm sure, it was out of simple frustration. Most of those people could be turned into "good" callers quite easily by listening to their problem, apologizing, then doing whatever you could do to make it right. Most of these, the quasi-mean, ended up apologizing by the end of the call for being mean. But many of the mean were looking for someone to blame, other than themselves, for a screw up. Or they were on a power trip, feeling that we lowly customer service reps should be kissing their feet because they were in the "Inner Circle" level of sales. Or they were taking out their frustration with their children or with their husband, or with their neighbors, or their customers on us. A few of these were so bad that they actually had their accounts flagged to warn the representative.

A subcategory of the mean callers is the scammers. These either start off sweet as pie, trying to sweet talk you into doing what they know they aren't allowed to do, or they start off yelling, trying to bully you into doing what they aren't allowed to do. These included people who would call and claim not to have received items, so that we would ship them out again, people who would try to get late fees and return fees refunded, and people who called with crazy stories, presumably hoping for some sort of big payoff. For example, I had a woman claim to have found a used condom in her box of lipsticks and perfumes. We offered to ship her a whole new box of stuff and she threw a tantrum, saying that that couldn't possibly compensate her for the trauma of seeing the condom in her stuff. Now, first of all, most of the boxes are packed by machine. Machines don't use condoms. And second of all, if she found anything in her box, she probably found a finger cot, which were used by the people who spot check the orders for accuracy and bears a passing resemblance (but no more than a passing resemblance!) to a condom, but would not, ummmmmm... show evidence of having been used.

Then there were the stupid callers. I feel perfectly comfortable using this description on the basis of the training we received at the beginning. We were not just trained on how to take calls. First, we learned about The Company and its products. Then we were trained on how the sales program works. We also toured the plant and the returns facility before finally starting to be trained on how to take calls. I'll get back to that part.

Anyway, the sales program could not be simpler. It is structured so that anyone can do it, at least in theory. The ordering process is incredibly simple, as is the returns process. New representatives are given a step-by-step guide that tells them how to handle various situations, and it is a marvel of flow chart simplicity. Really, any sixth grader could do it. The thing that makes it not easy is the fact that not everyone is cut out for sales. I know I'm not. But the actual process of being a sales rep for The Company is child's play. The stupid callers were incapable of handling it.

I can't begin to tell you how many calls I took from people who couldn't understand that they had to pay for the items they ordered, whether they sold them or not. Other callers would be upset at the $4 shipping fee to return non-defective products, claiming that no one ever told them that they'd have to pay to return the products, despite the fact that the manual AND the return form both advised of this fact in bold face type. Other callers didn't get the concept of ordering to begin with, calling to ask us why they hadn't received any items for that sales period only to have it become clear that they'd never sent an order to us, only written it down in their book-- and yet still be upset that we hadn't shipped it on out anyway.

The callers weren't the worst part of the job, though. That was The Company and its policies. To start, we were required to follow a very, very strict phone script. The scripts were organized as flow charts with certain phrases "required" and others "suggested". If you were audited on a call (and everyone was audited for a certain number of calls, depending on how many hours a week you worked), and you deviated from the chart or left out a required phrase, you failed the call, no matter how well you did on everything else. The scripts and a handful of quick reference guides were kept in three inch binders. I took mine home and tabbed it all to hell and back, just to be able to find the proper scripts.

In addition to the phone scripts, we were confined by a set of rules as to what we were allowed to do. For example, I could remove a late fee, provided that no late fees had been removed in the previous four months. Otherwise, I had to get supervisor approval. But I could also refuse to remove a late fee for certain reasons, such as an account that had been flagged for possible scamming. But I wasn't allowed to give a reason why to the caller. All I was allowed to say (and this was a required phrase) was "I'm sorry, I am not able to remove the fee at this time". I really, really hated that, first of all because it meant that the customer would just call back again, and hope to get someone who didn't know any better or just didn't care, and also because the use of the phrase "at this time" meant they'd keep calling to try again.

They also treated us like really stupid sheep, or maximum security prisoners. Whenever you left your desk, you had to put your phone in a "rest state"-- that is, take it out of the system for answering calls. If you went on break, you hit "Break", if you went to lunch "Meal Break", if you went to the bathroom "Comfort Break". If you went even one minute over, you got a notice. If you didn't take your break within five minutes of the time you were scheduled to take the break, you got a notice. Often, you would find yourself working a really crappy schedule with no recourse: Six hours straight on the phone, your first 15 minute break, then half an hour back on the phone before you go to lunch, and maybe your last break would be scheduled for the last half hour of your shift. And as for comfort breaks (aka potty breaks), if you took more than four minutes per shift, you got a notice.

If you got so many notices in a certain time frame, you got either a half or a full demerit. If you got more than two demerits in a rolling year, you were ineligible for merit raises or promotion. More than four demerits meant you were ineligible for all raises. More than six meant you were on probation, and eight could (theoretically) get you fired. In reality, the standard was applied rather haphazardly, with the supervisors' friends not getting demerits applied to their records, and those who the supervisors disliked being watched like hawks for any minor infraction. You also got demerits for failing a call audit, for being even one minute late for your shift, and for a myriad of other things.

In addition to the threat of getting demerits, you had to meet an arbitrary set of quotas to be eligible for raises or promotions. For example, you had to have an average call time of just over four minutes, you had to take a certain number of calls for every ten hours worked, and so on. The quotas were set so high that it was almost impossible to meet them if you actually did your job right. Many of the less scrupulous reps would do anything, up to and including faking a disconnect, in order to keep their average call time down. More than once, I found myself on a particularly long call, working on something particularly complicated, and felt my stomach tightening at the thought of what was happening to my call time.

And that flexible scheduling? The first time I tried to change my shift, I was told that I must have made that up because obviously if they hired me for that particular shift, that was when they needed me and I couldn't possibly change shifts. There was a long, complicated process to trade individual shifts, but there was a limit as to how many shifts you could trade in a certain period. Also, within a few months, staffing had become so precarious that they began scheduling us for mandatory overtime. At one point, I was working an average of 70 hours a week at The Company, as well as carrying a full time course load. Turnover was insane. Within two months of leaving training, I was the only one of our class of twenty or so who still worked at the Company.

I stuck it out for almost two years. The health coverage was excellent and paid for by the company, plus I got paid leave and stock options. During my second year there, I requested and was approved for a few days between Christmas and New Year's so that I could fly to Buffalo to visit Finbar and his family. I booked and paid for non-refundable tickets. Then I was transfered to a different supervisor's group. Maybe four days before I was due to leave, after several months of working mandatory overtime, the new guy informed me that I wasn't allowed to go because they needed me to work. I raised a bit of a stink, pointing out that the time had already been approved, all to no avail. I can only be pushed so far before I snap, and snap I did.

I took the vacation anyway.

When I got back, there was a letter in my mailbox, informing me that my employment at The Company was being terminated as a result of my failure to show up for my shift. I should have been frightened or upset at my sudden unemployment, because I had NO money and NO savings. Instead, I cried with relief. I'd already paid my rent for the month, and my parents bought me some groceries, so I just went out and found a job waitressing, which turned out to be a great job for me. I was very good at it, and made lots of money in far few hours, with much less stress. The ulcer healed, I stopped taking all of the medications, and I was able to finally enjoy being a college student for the last two years of my education.

A funny coda: Two weeks or so after being fired, I received another letter, informing me that I was being fired for failing to show up for my scheduled shift on January XX (I can't remember the actual date)-- the day after I was fired the first time. In other words, I was fired for not coming into work after I was fired.

Now, however, I find myself facing a bit of a dilemma. The Board of Law Examiners wants supporting documents to prove my version of events. What on earth am I supposed to send them? I guarantee that I don't still have the approval form or even the termination letters. That was all seven years and several moves ago. Do I have my parents sign sworn affidavits that this actually happened? Does my best friend write a letter on my behalf? I don't know who at The Company I would even contact to try and get documentation of such a thing. What will happen if I am unable to provide this documentation?

Bar Review, Day 6

Topics covered during the Property lecture:

• An incident in which a lesbian couple was supposedly given free lifetime passes to all Dodgers home games as an apology for kicking them out for kissing-- which apparently inspired the lecturer to go to Dodgers Stadium with his best friend to "make out", in hopes of scoring free tickets. The vignette was described in loving detail, including the phrase "His hands were down my pants", and was entirely inappropriate for a public gathering of any sort, but especially for one ostensibly professional in nature.
  
• A separate incident in which the lecturer ran into Pamela Anderson at a coffee shop while ordering his Tool Drink. She was ostensibly taken with the idea of his being a law professor, and hit on him: a 60-ish looking balding man with a terrible beard, an obnoxious voice, and freakish hands (seriously, they looked like enormous rubber gloves stuck on the ends of his shirt sleeves and pumped full of air), but he didn't pursue it.
• Jennifer Aniston
• Cher*
• Farting during the bar exam, requiring the use of a second pair of earplugs to stopper the nose after the proctor refused to allow him to switch seats to get away from the farter.**

*Okay, actually I'll give him this one, because it developed into an anecdote about how supposedly Cher sued someone who tried to build a home that would have impeded her view of the beach and was, I suppose, intended to illustrate the repudiated doctrine of negative easement for air, light, or view.

**He actually inserted sound effects during this story. I wanted to die.