Bar Wrap Up

It has taken me a week before I am ready to reflect on the bar exam. I can't say I have done nothing for the last week but close to it. The nine weeks of studying and exam left me pretty exhausted and having moved in the middle of it, I felt like I woke up last Friday in a life I did not recognize. It was only nine weeks, but the bar is all consuming, so I have been a bit disoriented.

So with one weeks retrospect, I guess I can say that it was pretty stressful although I had most of my anxiety dreams about it since it has been over. It happens at least once a day that I start thinking about some topic that was on the bar exam and wondering if I answered it right. I feel like I pretty much still remember almost everything that I knew a week ago, but I am sure that will slowly change.

It was not all bad. I do feel like I learned a lot and there was a certain sense of comradeship with other students that I had not felt in a long time. It didn't have the same feeling as first year classes where we were all graded against each other on a curve, although I know everyone looked around the room and thought to themselves that 1 out of every 4 people will fail and hoped it was someone else.

Speaking of the room, it is hard to imagine exactly what the conditions were like. I don't know how many people took the exam on computers, but there were probably 500 people sitting at their computers in groups of 2 in a single conference room with a proctor at the front on an elevated dias reading us the same instructions for each section of the exam and interrupting out thoughts at 30,10, and 1 minutes to go. I took a picture, but you can see too many people's faces for me to be able to post it.

The bar exam is probably like a lot of other experiences that really cannot be understood until you go through it. It strikes unique anxiety in almost all lawyers no matter how many years stretch between now and when you took it. For a professional organization, the bar association does not really make a good first impression since the first real experience you have with them is the bar exam.

I am glad it is over and I hope I will not have to go through that again, but all that is left for me now is to wait until the results come out in October. In the meantime, I have some more time off, and then I will be interning again at the prosecutor's office until the results come out. As far as this blog goes, I think its purpose as a law school blog has about concluded. I haven't decided whether I will continue blogging, but look for a couple more reflective posts about law school and then I will be wrapping this up.

Done.

After literally two and 1/2 days of cloudy weather, the clouds just broke and the sun has come out after the end of the exam. School's out for summer; school's out forever (hopefully.)

Almost done!

18 questions covering potentially 22 subjects are over. There was no evidence question and no Sales question but three torts and two contracts. Weird. This won't make must sense unless you have taken or are taking the bar. Six more professional responsibility questions and its over. Phew. Almost done.

Day 1

All I can really say about the exam at this point is that it is pretty exhausting. I was having a lot harder time remembering the rules on the 9th essay than I did on the first. I had both criminal law and criminal procedure today, which means I had a easy start and I still have some of my more difficult subjects ahead of me: business entities and constitutional law. Adrenaline and endurance. That is what I need to get through tomorrow.

Its here.

After 8 weeks of studying, it is finally here. If you were going to describe the skill needed most for the bar exam it would be endurance. I have probably written over 200 practice essays, and now I only have 24 to go. I can only hope what I have done enough, because there is not much more I can do. My success will not hang on what I do tonight but on what I have done for the last 8 weeks. I know what I know and don't know what I don't know. No matter if I fail or pass, I have done about as much as I could do. One can always do more, but it feels like I have been studying for the for years. A good night sleep is what I need now. I will check in here when it is over and let you know how it went.

Tour de Bar Exam

I have not had much time to blog lately. Not only am I mired in bar exam studying, but we had to move over the 4th of July weekend and did not have internet for a week, but we are up and running again. Studying has its good days and its bad days. I am glad the bar exam starts in a week because I am ready for this to be over. I think I am ready on at lease half of the subjects if the exam was tomorrow. I have a week to make sure I have the other half in my head. It was hard to study last weekend because I just wanted to have a day off to do things I wanted to do, but then I remember it was either two more weeks of studying or six months. At least I still have my sense of humor. Last night S found this picture that describes the exact hypothetical our Sales professor used to explain when risk of loss transfers. Imagine you are buying an ice cream cone at the beach and just as the vendor hands it out to you, a seagull swoops down and grabs it out of his hand-vendor's loss because goods not tendered. If you take the goods into your hand, they have been tendered and if the seagull comes in the situation depicted below, you still have to pay for it. I thought he was just making up a crazy hypothetical. I guess I was wrong.

Back at It.

I was pretty much worthless all day Saturday, and it has been difficult getting back in the swing of things. When it comes to studying, if you give yourself an inch, you might take a mile. I certainly needed a break, but it became easy to rationalize more breaks as the weekend went on. I really had to struggle through writing essays yesterday. Plus it is getting very warm here, so it is getting harding to study.

I have a no class today, but I have essays to catch up on. I just finished 3 evidence essays which was so refreshing after commercial paper. It is nice to have a few subjects that I feel good at. If the exam was today, I am pretty sure I could pass whatever evidence question came along. That is one of the advantages of criminal law: you really learn evidence. Civil attorneys simply do not use the rules of evidence as often as in criminal law. This afternoon I have to write torts essays, and even though I kind of like torts (not committing them) I struggle with those questions. They are such a jumble of activity that I seem to miss torts that are going on. Anyway enough details. My brain appears to be back in business a little bit.

Brain Freeze

My brain finally gave out yesterday afternoon. It totally froze up and would not let me learn anything else. After 18 subjects in 5 weeks with 3 more subjects to go, I sat down to write my practice essays in commercial paper yesterday afternoon and try as I might, I simply could not get the rules to come into my brain. I was spent: too much information in too little time. I somehow slogged through 2 essays, but it was essentially a waist of time and I would have been better off trying to recover than persist in the futility. I am hoping I can muster enough energy to get through a few essays today and then take the rest of the day off to enjoy the nice weather we have and give my brain a rest. The cool morning breeze coming through the window to the study is just too delicious to sit here all day and there is no way I am going to get through another week without some time to recover.


(view out my study window of a beautiful morning)

Corporations

I hated learning corporations as much the second time as the first time. It was painful to spend the whole day writing corporation essays. Each time I start a new subject, I forget that the first couple of essays always suck, but with corporations, it was not until the 5th one where I started to feel like I knew what I was talking about, and considering I took a whole semester on business entities and did not remember anything, I don't have a lot of hope I will remember much of what I did today when I have to sit down again in week or so to write more. I actually find it easier to write on a subject that I never took the class in and just learned the basics in our 3 hour bar prep class. They say the bar exam is like a river that is an inch deep but a mile wide, so it is easier to have less depth in a subject than more. Once you learn the 15-30 basic rules for a subject, that is all you really need to know and be able to memorize them, spot them and write them out again on the essay. A whole semester of business entities left me more mostly confused (I somehow did half-way decent on the exam) than if I had just learned the rules in a single class as I did for secured transactions.

Anyway, time to get outside with the dogs.

A wall and the other side

I kind of hit a wall this week. I don't know if it is the constant onslaught of new subjects or the relentless pace of essay writing, but yesterday evening I wrote one professional responsibility essay and I simply could not do any more. My brain was just full and I couldn't take it. Luckily S, having taken and passed the bar, understands these things and took me out for Mexican food and a margarita.

I also visited my old (not so old, but it seems like I have been studying for the bar for ages) office this week, which left me with mixed emotions. On the one hand I feel totally left out of life and I missed work a lot when I heard about the interesting cases that the lawyers were working on. It took me until today to let that feeling inspire me to get over this wall that i have run into and remember why I am doing this: because I want to be a lawyer.

That said, I got all my essays done for today, so it is time for a break.

bar

Whereas the first week of bar prep was all about getting organized and the second week was all about getting a rythem, last week was all about getting exhausted with bar prep. A lot of people were like me and found time for themselves last weekend, because even though it has only been three weeks it seems like ages since I have had extra time for myself. Now though it is time to grind through the rest of the review class. We are getting exhausted into some subjects now in which I have not taken the class: wills,trusts, secured transactions. Why cant there be more criminal procedure?