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.

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?

Time for studying and selfishness

S, who took the bar two years ago, said to me last night that during the bar you have a little more freedom to be selfish than one normally has. I notice the other students at school are all walking a with a little bit more focus and occasionally someone you knew well from classes will pass you without even noticing that you are there: usually on their way to or from Starbucks during our Bar class breaks. As much as studying for the bar is tedious, boring, and draining, there is something kind of nice about having such a singular focus. I feel like I have a purpose when I get up in the morning. Almost every hour of my day is planned out either as study or scheduled relaxation, eating, or exercising time. I don't really spend too much time thinking about anything else except the bar (and a little bit of wedding preparation here and there.) I have to admit, I have not been this focused in all of lawschool, maybe even my whole life, and it carries over into other areas. I have been amazingly good about getting the dishes done and my desk is cleaner than it has been in years. It must be that fitting such vast amounts of information into one's head requires a very systematic process and it just seems easier to plug away and keep everything organized than to let it fall apart. Then again, it is hard to tell what is going on outside my own head.

If I have to compare it, it kind of reminds me of when I first moved to Germany and was in a 6 week intensive German class. We had class in the morning and then we studied in the afternoon. I did a lot less studying then and a lot more drinking, but I was fresh in the country and I was fully absorbed in learning the language during most of the day, especially when drinking. It also kind of reminds me of being on swim team in high school. The first couple of days of the season were always kind of painful, but then every day you get a bit stronger and you can swim harder and stronger. We would always peak a week or two before the biggest swim meet (usually State) and then taper off so that we were relaxed and not exhausted when the big day came. I wonder if that is a good strategy for the bar as well.

We had this really annoying public defender speak in our professional responsibility class, but one story he told I found, well, it was something that stuck with me. He was describing some clients of his, big drug dealers, and they had told him how they prepared for big drug deals (meetings with lots of guys with guns and cash.) He explained what his client had said that he would get wherever he was going a day early then he would work out and relax the whole day before the deal and go to bed early.

I have a long way to go before I need to plan for the few days before the exam, but I might keep that in mind. For now it is the long schlog of class, commute, outline, practice essay, practice, essay, practice essay, then start all over again with a new subject.

Bar

I am three days into studying for the bar and I am already having trouble keeping a positive outlook, so I am going to try and remind myself of a couple of things.

1. When I am done, I will know the most about black letter law that I will ever know for the rest of my life.

2. If I pass, I will never have to take the Washington Bar Exam again

3. Even though there is a lot I still need to learn, it is kind of cool to realize how much I already know from the past three years.

4. When you are trying to memorize the law in 21 areas, sometimes the right answer really does match with common sense (the exceptions prove the rule, because there are all sorts of wacky things that you just simply have to memorize)

5. It still doesn't fee like summer here, so I don't mind as much sitting inside studying on a cloudy day.

Do not expect too much blogging for the next eight weeks. At some point I want to write a few retrospective comments on law school and such, but that will probably wait and then this blog will come to an end. Until then, wish me luck as I return to my study hole.

Driving Record

I just sent in my bar application--that required self-reporting confession of past acts that must be revealed to the bar before they will let you sit for a two and one-half day exam. The hardest part was trying to remember all of the addresses where I have lived for the past 5 years. I have moved four times during law school! I also had to least all past crimes including traffic infractions and parking tickets.

I noticed some interesting things in listing out all of my confrontations with the law (you can assume that haven't been all that many since I passed a background check to work at a prosecutors office.) I must have been afflicted with the all-too-common testosterone fueled need for speed for a couple of years in my late teens and early twenties. I had a string of speeding tickets throughout my college years and also enough unpaid parking tickets from the university parking enforcement that I once had my vehicle towed, but for the most part I mostly had a lead foot.

IN the years after graduating college, I pretty much stopped getting speeding tickets, but I had several tickets for expired tabs. I see a lot of people in court who are in court on a suspended license from not paying speeding or other tickets. Most of them are poor and choose to pay for food or new clothes for their kids than pay for speeding tickets and often they are pulled over because they didn't have valid tabs on their car. The reason people do not have valid tabs can be nefarious (stolen car, stolen plates, etc) but they can also be economical (can't afford the emissions test, the licensing fees, etc) or because you are lazy and forgetful. The latter was the case with me. The latter was true for me. I can remember putting off going down to the licensing place until I got the no tab ticket.

But in the last three I haven't had a thing, not so much as a parking ticket. Part of that is the result of not owning a car for a year and one-half. There was no speeding then. The other part has been working in a personal injury firm and a prosecutors officer transforming me into a defensive driver and strict follower of the traffic code. When you read about thousands of car accidents, DUIs, reckless driving cases you realize what a dangerous place the roads are and how important it is to be a careful driver. The other added benefit of not speeding and keeping your tabs up to date is even though you may get places a bit later and you have to make sure you check your mail, you sure do save a ton of money. $112 speeding ticket? No thanks.