Finito

Done. Now I get to pack up my apartment, run a bunch of errands, load up a moving truck in 95 degree heat, drive for a while, unload said moving truck in 105 degree heat, pack, and then spend 36 hours on a plane and in transit before I can say I'm on vacation. But I feel like I am already there.

Beyond Thursday

Around 4 this morning I woke up feeling sick because I couldn't remember what a holder in due course was or the elements of negotiability. I almost got up to check my notes, but I refused to let this stupid exam take that much control over my life. Up until now, I've been sleeping fine. Maybe my studying yesterday threw me off a bit. I did some MBE questions and did pretty well (confidence boost!) and then proceeded to totally suck on the civ pro and evidence portion (I'm gonna fail!). Sometimes I wish, "you can't do that" were an acceptable response.

I did essays this afternoon and will do some minimal studying tonight and tomorrow. It is over at this point. I'm pretty sure I can hit 70% (well, 67.5%), which is all I need. A new concern I have is that my handwriting blows. I've had daymares where I fail the bar and then get a letter saying that the bar examiners simply couldn't decipher the scratches I turned in as my answers and thus were forced to fail me.

To distract me from all of this, last night and this morning I obsessively planned my bar trip. I decided to rearrange my itinerary and skip southern Sarawak. Even though it sounds totally cool, I need to have more buffer time for when things go wrong or when I have to sit around for a day or so. Malaysia seems really developed, but I think this is a trick. I had to remember the finely honed skills I learned in the land where everything is broken. I'm focusing on this park and diving with lots of great filler in between. I'm still working on the dive part; I originally planned to just show up and look for dive operators and accomodation since the resorts are super-expensive, but I'm thinking that might be a bit risky. I may do a stationary live-aboard on a reconfigured oil rig.

So, there is life beyond the bar. I'll be in a jungle in South East Asia in two weeks whether or not I can answer the question about the negotiability of a draft received by an alleged holder in due course.

No more model answers

I need a reality check. I am tired of reading perfect answers that rattle off the 6 things you are supposed to file to protect a party from an abusive spouse or the three elements required to prove slander of title. The answers seem obvious when you read them, but usually when I am outlining there are more than a few questions that elicit a response of, "I have no idea. Confrontation clause?"

I want to see the answers of real life people who passed the bar with less than perfect responses. People who wrote "???" after being asked for the procedure that must be followed to take a victim's oral deposition. Or people who say the litigants in a will contest should just share the savings account, or who write that the mortgage company is staffed with bastards because it foreclosed on the old lady's house after she couldn't pay her medical bills.

If I had a better idea of what is really required to pass, maybe I'd be able to watch "So You Think You Can Dance" without thinking about neglecting consumer rights or commercial paper or other subjects I avoided in law school. Because really, 7 hours of studying a day is already too much.

I resolve to take most of Sunday and Monday off. I'm learning nothing new at this point.

Bar-Bri Class Action

I assume that everyone who took BarBri got a notice of the class action law suit. About time. I'm not surprised that BarBri is in cahoots with my evil former employer.* The NYT ran an article on this last December that gives some more detail. It is a good thing that I'm not on the jury, or the defense lawyer would be using one of their preemptive strikes against me during the voir dire.

And to all the Republicans who complain about lawsuit abuse: screw you. I want my coupon.


*Moonlit as a GRE instructor in DC since the Hill job didn't pay so well when I started. Why didn't I go to grad school in biology?

Is studying for the bar the worst experience ever?

No, but it is definitely up there on my list.

I am very tired of studying, and I never liked studying to begin with. I also hate studying and not making any measurable progress. For example, I'm still getting about half the MBE questions wrong. Did I go to law school? What was the use of an insanely expensive bar prep course if I feel like I'm doing about the same as I was in late May?

I suppose this drawn out torture that is the bar ranks up there with my junior year spring semester when I took biochemistry and genetics. I hated both and got crappy grades to boot. Oh, I'm forgetting the protein purification lab, where once a week I would spend 8+ hours in the basement of the biology building, grinding up mouse livers and then analyzing them. We'd get a break for dinner.

As for concentrated unpleasantness, this summer prep period doesn't quite rank up there with some of the following gems I've experienced (in no particular order):

• Having a rat jump on my head (perhaps as revenge for the torture I inflicted on its rodent brethren in the protein purification lab?)
• Malaria
• Having an "acid bug" fall on my face 2 mm from my right eye, going to a third world hospital for treatment, and then spending half a day looking for the medication.
• Getting mugged by five guys at knife point in downtown Johannesburg at 10 AM.
• Food poisoning in Lençois, Brazil. The water went out in my hotel room, so I wasn't able to flush my diarrhea before I shoved my face in the toilet bowl to puke. And then I couldn't rinse the vomit taste out of my mouth.

I'm sure once next Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday have passed, I'll be able to add them up there. And then next year I will add the Feb 07 bar as well.

Essay Q/A preview

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1) Werkljerj aldjfkldjf wklejr lskjd? Explain fully.

2) Adlkfjalkf wklejr slkjslkjdf. Sl;dkjfkldf welkrj:
a) Werklj wekljr erlkjer? Explain fully.
b) Lkjkljeklj lkjfgkljf elkjrkltjjk lkjflkjg? Explain fully.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Goodbye, Coin Laundry

Goodbye, Coin Laundry
Goodbye to the $1 loads of wash
Goodbye, homeless people who sleep on the concrete floors
and the creepy people who don't

Goodbye to lugging loads of laundry across the street
'round a dangerous curve

Goodbye to searching for that last quarter to feed the dryer

MPT

Why is it so tempting to blow off this section of the bar? If you think about it, at 10%, the Mulitstate Performance Test counts for more than the excruciatingly painful civil and criminal procedure section when you exclude what you are already learning for evidence. So, I should be spending more time on the MPT than on the procedure crap.

But writing a legal memo? And studying for how best to write a legal memo?

Maybe I'll do a practice one later this evening. But first, I am going to eat tacos, drink beer, and watch summer re-runs and trashy TV.

Random observations from a Tuesday in the trenches

I'm working through the advanced MBE questions in our BarBri materials. I think this is a mistake. I did fine on contracts yesterday, but on torts this morning I scored a little better than guessing. The difficulty is not that I don't know the material (well, maybe I don't), but that some of the questions test on totally bizarre topics, like the "firefighter's doctrine." Or that angry bees are domestic animals, even when they swarm after a car crashes into their hive. Some of the questions say the exact opposite as what we learned in class, like the effect of assumption of risk in comparative negligence states. I'm starting to remember the strange, rarely tested exceptions and forget the more general rules that comprise the bulk of the questions. Great.

As for the essays, some are okay, but commercial paper - wtf. At least we are all in the same boat.

Ugh.

At the gym today some guy was hogging the flat bench. He was there for almost 30 minutes, and he wasn't even using it for exercises that require the use of a bench. I did other stuff until he got on my nerves, then I politely asked if I could work in. He said, "um, yes." I didn't let him back in because I was going to make him ask for it. He didn't, and chose to do some bicep curls instead, which don't require the use of a bench. Maybe he was scared of me because I traded in my golden locks for a buzz cut.

Here's some good news about Prof. Benjamin a faculty member at UT who has been nominated to one (of two) of Brazil's Supreme Courts.* I guess that means he won't be coming back next spring. Too bad for future UT students; he is a good prof who seems to care about his students and helped me out with a lot of Brazil stuff over the past two years.

And finally, I don't know what this whole "Evening Study Schedule" is. I'm dead at 5, and all I want to do is eat lasagna and watch movies. Criminal and Civil Procedure and Evidence and the MPT just won't be committed to memory.


*Roughly, the STF handles all cases with constitutional questions. The STJ handles everything else. The STF is more akin to our Supreme Court even though the STJ is the highest federal court for most matters.

Simple pleasures

On the way to the last day of BarBri yesterday, I stopped for coffee and a bagel. A guy was sitting outside in the sun, reading a novel and drinking his coffee.

I was jealous.

Cruel joke for recent grads?

Dear Dean ad interim Goode:

Thank you for your fundraising solicitation letter. As you may know, I graduated from the Law School this past May. Like many recent grads, I am deeply in debt and my first several pay checks are already allocated to paying off my credit card bill. What little money I have must get me through the rest of the month and pay for my bar trip to Borneo. Ask me next spring and maybe I'll give $100.

Sincerely,

Blogazon

P.S. - Could you retroactively change my 1st year Property grade? You know, the one where I got totally screwed since it was lowered after it was posted? If you recall, you were the one who said "no" after the real Dean and the Property professor said "yes."

---------------

The Law School's annual fund drive for 2006 will soon be over,
and I am writing one last time to ask for your help. This is an
exciting time for the Law School. As you probably know, Larry Sager
will be taking over as dean on September 1. He has great ambitions for
the Law School, and a strong finish to our annual fund drive will help
get him off to a running start. Your support enables us to compete for
the very best faculty and the very best students, two of the critical
components of a great law school. The third, of course, is a great
alumni base.

We are proud of our alumni; we want you to be proud of us. Please lend
your support. We will put your donation to good use.

You can send your contribution to:

The University of Texas School of Law
727 East Dean Keeton Street
Austin, TX 78705

Online contributions may be made by going to:
http://services.texasexes.org/site/R?i=PVff7CtKYIBZoSvK_bbJOQ.. .

If you have any questions, please call us at (512) 232-1220.

Thanks.

Best wishes,

Steven Goode
Dean ad interim

WWJD

A friend drops you off after dinner and comes up to your apartment for about an hour. It is night and has been raining off and on all day. Your friend parked without a permit, but since you have lived in the same complex for 3 years and have yet to even see a tow truck in the vicinity, you assume that everything will be fine. Plus it is summer and there are open parking spaces.

Your friend leaves and then comes back about 2 minutes later because a white Lexus is parked where the 1992 Nissan Sentra used to be. Of course your friend's car was towed, and you must make a very annoying 11 PM trip to the tow yard by the fucking airport. Betty, the tow yard skank, is clad in a loose t-shirt and sweat pant shorts and is in desperate need of a hair stylist. She charges your friend $191.45 to liberate his car. Betty is a tad bit bitchy and says the tow trucks patrol, but I find this to be a stretch since I've never seen a tow truck guy get out and check front windshields for permits, especially at night when it is raining. This only reinforces my previous conclusion that some gigantic asshole who lives in the complex called the towing company.

Upon your return, you park your car and see four empty spaces but note that two cars lack parking permits. You would:

A) Report the two vehicles to the towing company.

B) Let the air out of the tires of the white Lexus.

C) Leave a note under the windshield of the white Lexus that said, "Hi - I don't know if you called the towing company last night to have a white Nissan that was parked in this space towed. If you didn't, this note doesn't apply to you. If you did, you suck. There were several open spaces as well as the lot around back. And it was dark and raining."

D) Leave a note under the windshield wiper of the two cars lacking permits. The note says, "You don't have a permit to park here. If I were a hater, I'd call and have you towed, like someone did to my friend. Consider this your lucky day. I saved you $191.45 and a trip to the tow yard by the airport."