Day 927: Crossing the Bar

I did it. I survived the bar. As with so many things in life, the end was...anticlimactic.

Day One was the MEE, ten essays over seven hours with an hour for lunch in the middle. When I showed up, I ran into my old buddy Kent, and we also ran into Adam and Kyle, Danny and Joel, some other CU Law alum from the class of 2010, although Adam and Kyle had been studying down at the Y. (Adam already has a job lined up. Lucky man.)

My roommate made me breakfast, scrambled eggs and pancakes and a green apple, and we talked before I headed off to the testing site. It was at a convention center. 350-odd stressed-out law grads makes for the worst convention ever, I think. I stretched out (I haven't done nearly enough of that business lately) and then they checked us in. Human cattle call. We were assigned numbers and placed at tables, two to a table, at opposite ends facing opposite directions. I ended up at a table with a guy I went to undergrad with (he was a poli sci major, I was a CJ minor, we were in the same building a lot my last couple of years of college). He looked persistently familiar, so I asked where he went to undergrad and...I was right. I wasn't stressed out as much as fed up - I just wanted to get the stupid exam done and over with.

Amber was right - having done a sufficient number of practice essays, none of the essays on the bar were going to be any harder than the ones I'd already done. I had to take a few risks where the evidence could have swung either way on an issue, but I'm pretty sure, when push came to shove, I got the analysis right. I didn't ever turn to an essay and have a heart attack because my brain went blank. I tackled the MPTs first, which was a bit of a strain, because usually I feel more confident about those, but I just wasn't feeling them. The actual MEE essays, on the other hand, I felt all right with. I hated the PR essay, not gonna lie, but those are pretty much always lame. At lunch Kent and I went to Subway. I bolted down a foot-long in about...ten minutes. It was pretty shocking, actually. At lunch I ran into this girl, Bethany, who I debated against in high school. Also I had a crush on her boyfriend in college. She recognized me even with my short hair. It was awkward.

The second half was a little harder than the first just because I was tired, but I made it home. My roommates were friendly and cheerful. I wasn't hungry and ended up eating two chocolate bars and half a tin of fruit for supper. I talked to Angela on the phone, watched some I-Man and Jeopardy, and then went to sleep. Yeah. Cody called while I was half-asleep, but I talked to him anyway, because I do have a short list of people who get to call late, even on the eve of day 2 of the bar (my immediate family, Black Dogs, combat/law sisters, and my boyfriend).

This morning was...harder. My roommate Honivah made me french toast, which was super awesome, and we talked and laughed. And then I took off for the bar. The human cattle call and morning admin stuff wasn't nearly as long and horrendous today as it was the day before, but it was still long. We CU Bluejays hung back and waited for the lines to shrink before we subjected ourselves to the lines. They provided us pencils because heaven forbid one of us have a secret camera-pencil. I was once again seated with my old SUU alum buddy, and we forged ahead. I deliberately forced myself to read slowly, but I still finished within two hours. One hundred questions within two hours, and I was trying to go slow. I forced myself to check some questions (I made more corrections than I usually do, which freaks me out), and then I doodled in the back of the exam book. (Yesterday I doodled on my palm. Blue ink henna pattern. After busting a tendon in my right hand from writing ten essays.)

We had ten minutes extra for lunch, so Kent and I carpooled down to the mall to hit up Panda Express, which was super tasty and made me uber happy. My fortune cookie said "a note full of cheer is coming from a loved one". Surprisingly accurate state of my life, seeing how my mother sends love-you cards very often.

The second half of the exam was brutal. Every other question was out to defeat me, and one torts question cited a rule I'd never even heard of. I figured if I didn't know it, most of my fellow barbri students wouldn't know it either. But I decided not to do a post-mortem on the exam and just let it go. After they collected our exams and paperwork, the little lady with the annoying voice set us free...and that was that. No cheering, because some other poor fools were locked away somewhere taking the test (alternative accommodations or something). I waved goodbye to Adam, didn't even see Kent. Just walked away. Drove home.

It's done.

The weird they they did was with the clocks. At the beginning of each half, the time was started at twelve and expired at either three or three-thirty, which was...disorienting, because the room had no windows. It almost felt like a brainwashing technique. But it did save me having to calculate weird times to allot proper increments for my essays.

Now I'm back at the house I sometimes inadvertently call home.

I'm going to miss my super-awesome roommates. But it is done. Now I have to learn how to be a little lazy now and again.



P.S. When I got home, I checked the mail stash, I got a letter from Cody.