T Minus 23 Hours and Counting

Do a Google search of, say, "bar exam" and neurotic and you will find scores of bulletin boards, blogs, and web sites full of pitiful, scared recent law school graduates. They are all agonizing -- did you really study the 9-12 hours a day Barbri recommends for the final two weeks before the bar? How many practice Multiple choice questions have you done -- 500, 800, 2000? They are swapping mnemonics like baseball cards and comparing strategies for completely eliminating any need to urinate for three straight days. Now, it's very clear to me that law school, and thus the profession, attracts more than its fair share of obsessive compulsive neurotics and insecure twits who can only reassure themselves of their self worth by telling everyone they meet their scores on every standardized test they have ever taken. You can imagine then, how people of this sort must respond to the prospect of an exam like the bar. It's not pretty.

I would like to say that I am immune to all the craziness, but I must admit that I am, quite frankly, scared. Starting tomorrow, I will be expected to display stunning prowess (well, really about 65% prowess) in fifteen different legal subjects, each of which have been in development in our common law system for decades, if not centuries. Generations of lawyers and judges and legislatures have had years and years to cook all this shit up and I have had two months to digest it all. (Many of you may be confused by the last statement -- "Why," you may say, "you have just completed three years of law school." Take a moment now to disabuse yourself of the idea that law school prepares individuals for anything remotely related to the bar exam. Don't ask why, just do it.) I dare not predict today whether my strategies and studies have paid off, but a strange sense of serenity has descended upon me. There's little else I can do at this point, and so I am mindlessly reproducing all my memorization lists over and over again and watching tv. By the next time you are likely to hear from me in this medium again, my personality will have returned and I will be back to my normal, non-law spewing self.