The Way That BarBri Sucks

So the question was posed to me, and I feel I should respond, "Does BarBri actually suck that much? Why did you take it?"

Well, let's be clear. I never said that it sucks because it doesn't WORK. I think it's pretty much impossible to approach bar prep on your own (how on earth would you go about gathering all of The Law you need to know?). You could buy materials from a couple of non-BarBri sources, but those don't have the same proven success rate and may not do as good a job of covering state-exclusive topics.

Even if you did that, you'd be facing the biggest problem: procrastination. If BarBri does anything, it gets your butt into a chair and learning, six days a week, at least four hours a day, starting in MAY. Do you think I would have been thinking about Wills & Trusts on May 23 if BarBri hadn't forced me to do so?

So there's that, and then there's the fact that the material is pretty good. I think you could very easily focus only on the lecture handout book and be all set for the bar, and I mean all of the bar, from the MPT to the MBE to the Essays and even the dreaded Procedure & Evidence ("dreaded" in that I dread it b/c the only thing I hate more than evidence is procedure!).

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No, I'd say the problem with BarBri is that it is SO DAMN GOOD that it killed all of its viable competitors and now has a monopoly. Which means they can treat us all like crap. Which they do, on a daily basis, with eyes that are filled with unholy glee. Which is why BarBri sucks!

Looooooooser

In case the last post didn't tip you off already...I, ahem, didn't go to BarBri today. I had the best of intentions, really I did, but then the alarm went off this morning and it just was. not. happening.

So I rolled over, after shooting off a text message to C (and receiving the response back from her and J that "barbri today is AWESOME and it hasn't even started yet!"), and went back to sleep. For seven hours.

Ah, bliss.

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I decided my penance is to go over every single simulated MBE question, including the three that I got right, just like I would have if I'd gone.

oh. happy day.

Um, yay. I received my bar exam admission ticket. I do get to take the bar after all. Yip. Ee.

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Had the simulated MBE today. I felt like absolute crap while I was taking it. But then I got home and graded it and found out I didn't do so bad. I'm not sure if it would be "passing" in real life because I have no idea what those standards are. ???

I still don't know if I'll go to the review classes tomorrow and Saturday. Any opinions from someone who's been through it?

The word today was, "Oh, it's a huge waste of time. You'll sit there for 16 hours and get maybe 2 useful exam-taking tips in that whole time."

Well...I WANT those exam tips. Anyone want to share any tips they've gotten? Please?

If it's just about going over the answers, it seems like the explanations in the back of the simulated MBE would do the trick.

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I really think that BarBri place is unhealthy. I've been getting these headaches every day, and I figured it was just stress/lack of sleep/usual weather-related stuff. Some if it probably is, but I'm pretty sure that mold-infested dank dungeon hell has something to do with it as well.

I really felt it during the MBE today. Everything was fine, and then the air conditioning started up (you know, the one that makes it feel like a meat locker in there). It's like being in a wind tunnel. My hair and any loose paper, napkins, empty snack bags I have lying there go flying. That's how much it blows (both literally and figuratively, ha ha ha).

Anyway, I noticed today when it started up that it had a very strange odor, and shortly thereafter my head started bothering me again.

Stupid BarBri. I've said it before and I'll say it again: BarBri sucks!!

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"BarBri sucks" is, of course, the most popular search phrase people use to find my blog. Surprised? You haven't been paying attention.

The second most popular phrase is "gorgeous masculinity." Gosh. I appreciate it myself, but my, they must have been disappointed.

A Good Reason To Go to Law School

We all know the main reasons, of course. You need that law degree so you can write ultra-realistic thrillers about crooked law firms and young idealistic lawyers in the South.

You need it to get on Larry King to discuss the latest true-crime drama -- assuming you're also a) hot and b) loud.

And you definitely need it to be the star of your very own courtroom TV show, though God only knows why since you get to make up your own law anyway.

But let's be realistic. There's only enough of those jobs to employ 85-90% of us. The rest of us will be forced to toil away in lawyerly obscurity at law firms and government agencies and corporations. What's the point? Why even bother?

Or at least that's what we would say, if it weren't for The Reason, really the ONLY reason, to go to law school: so you can be really annoying when you're watching TV! Hello, Law & Order, it's called the 6th Amendment! Stupid Seinfeld, that's not what "Good Samaritan" laws are all about!

I had a moment like that today in BarBri's Oil & Gas lecture. Oh, my friends, it was thrilling. I still have goosebumps. I discovered...hold on to your hats!!...there was no need for anyone on The Simpsons to shoot Burns at all! They should have just sued him! Slant well drilling is a trespass! He's liable for damages, which, due to his bad faith, consist of all of his revenues from productive wells, with no credit for costs! And he can be enjoined from further drilling!

OH MY GOD I CAN'T HANDLE A SINGLE OUNCE MORE OF OIL & GAS BLISS!!!!!

Writing When I Should Be Sleeping

I'm sitting here in a state of strung-out exhaustion, and my eyes have that warm-sticky-numb feeling they get after they've been dilated at the optometrist's, and everything around me has taken on a kind of skewed unreality rarely seen outside of dreams, with shadows where there should be none and tiny flickering things not-quite seen at the edges of my vision.

I should go to bed. But instead I'm thinking about resentment. Someone confessed to me awhile back that they sometimes get so angry at their spouse, because the spouse will be sitting there innocently watching TV or going out for drinks or any of a million little leisure activities that are unremarkable until the bar eats your life...whereas my friend has to study, and the whole situation seems unbearably unfair.

This post isn't really about that person. It's about all the other people who are thinking the same thing and feeling the same way. It's about me, because God, I know that feeling: not so much right now, because hey, things aren't so bad right now, but I know it because I lived it for a huge part of my first year of law school. I would think, how dare anyone have it easier than me? How dare they suggest that their own troubles are greater than mine, when they so clearly aren't?

And I know it because I've lived it on the other end, when someone resents the fact that your life isn't steeped in the same misery that chokes their every breath. Where a simple question like, "What did you do today?" is almost buried under the weight of all the things that go unsaid, the barely cloaked hostility and narrowed gaze just waiting for the opportunity to seize triumphantly on the evidence that you're not as unhappy as they are and so they win and you lose.

I think there's loss enough for everyone to share.

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And I know because, forgive the repetition but it's important, I HAVE BEEN THERE, I know how nothing anybody says, how no amount of rationalization or cold slap in the face of reality, can help when you feel this way. It's something that goes right to your primitive core and bypasses all notions of logic.

Still...yet...even so...the fact is that the people who love us don't want that for us. They take no pleasure in our pain, and they don't ask it of us. We made our own choices, for ourselves, even if the reasons behind our choices involved the best interests of others. The burden of responsibility -- and blame -- rests firmly on our own shoulders.

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Lucky for us those same people who love us forgive our excesses after the storm has passed.

Paranoid

You know how I said certain BarJerks are playing mind games by claiming not to study when they really do?

There's this guy at BarBri who's always very friendly to me (calm down, Mom, he has a girlfriend). He's especially eager to talk about lack of studying and seemed really excited when he heard I wasn't exactly burning the midnight oil. He's very encouraging of my non-studying ways. When he found out last week that I had in fact started studying, he seemed disappointed and jokingly accused me of "abandoning the cause."

Well, were I still clinging to some shred of sanity, I'd just say, ohboyohboy I made a friend somebody likes me yay. Except that with my head filled with all these tales of cunning subterfuge, I'm really becoming suspicious of all this. Can it be that this individual has targeted me, unassuming caffeine-consuming frequently-fuming ME, as the person he wants to take down?

Ha! I'll show him, I'll show them all! Wait'll he sees the short sheets I'm making! Then he'll be sorry! You'll ALL be sorry!!!!

Dude, Where's My Bar?

...exam location, that is.

I still haven't received my admission ticket for the bar. Since I have already paid off my credit card charge of over $500 for a super-swanky hotel room located conveniently adjacent to my presumed test site, this could be a bad thing.

I also had to download and pay for the exam software. Did you know that you also have to download the actual exams at the same time? When I open up the program, I see them sitting there, spelling out my doom. Procedure & Evidence. Essays. MPT.

Don't get too excited; I can't hack into them to find out the questions. Each is just a blank file you use to type in your answers. Plus that would be, like, unethical and stuff.

The Evidence, Your Honor

When I fail the bar and everyone is wondering why, perhaps the following will provide adequate explanation.

Exhibit A: the many many flowers I have drawn. (Also provides clear and convincing evidence as to why I have to be a lawyer because my potential career as an artiste is dead in the water.)

Exhibit B: the "Treat of Violence." Because, according to my BarBri lecture book, secured creditors may not use the "treat of violence" to enforce their self-help remedy.

Exhibit C: Well, look, these live on my front lawn and see HOW CUTE! Who could study with them around?

Bring It On, MBE

Supposedly I now know everything I need to know for the MBE. I've at least attended all the MBE-related BarBri lectures. So I'm all set, right?

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Chemerinsky was here yesterday for Con Law. I ended up being pleasantly surprised. He wasn't nearly as annoying as I'd been led to believe. I appreciated the effort he made to be funny -- whether he actually was or not is debatable, but come on, it's not exactly easy to extract high comedy out of black-letter law. He made the requisite crack about the location. Yes, we get it. It sucks.

I had no idea that he is actually this Chemerinsky. Here is my reaction to this news.

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Eight hours of nonstop barlicious fun was a bit much, I'll grant you. I definitely found my attention wandering. For the most part, though, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I had that kind of gritted-teeth patience you have to rely on to get through a long international flight. Hey, nobody wants to be there, and it's going to seem like it lasts forever, but there's nothing anybody can do about that so we might as well just sit back and try to make the best of our situation.

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I finally returned home at about 7 and discovered several increasingly frantic messages from my parents (also on my cellphone, which I turned off the better to NOT MISS A SINGLE SECOND of Con Law edification). They had no idea I was at BarBri all day and, unable to reach me, became convinced I was Lying Dead in a Ditch Somewhere.

So that was fun. Especially the part where my mom burst into my house a few minutes after I had arrived and thought I was an intruder because of course I couldn't me be because I was, you'll recall, dead and stuff.

But the part that's even sadder is that I was all touched that they cared. :-P

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Meanwhile, I think the Train Gods decided to punish me for daring to criticize the state of public transportation in this city. I lost my train pass. And I maybe-probably-won't be riding the train anymore, but what if I, er, change my mind? I would like to have my train pass that enables me to ride for free, because riding for free is nice and paying is not.

Furthermore, I may really need it. The chances of me actually being able to find the BarPit on Tuesday are slim. I caught a ride with C yesterday because I figured I could learn the directions by watching her. Well, first of all we decided to save money by parking in Canada, which was great because the parking was free but bad because we were in Canada. And even if I wanted to park in Canada myself, I don't have a clue how to get there, what with C expertly zipping up and down little streets that appeared out of nowhere and roaring past guys doing construction and then there was that part where it began raining really hard and hailing and she was driving really fast and I had to cover my eyes because please God I am too young to die!

So I don't know if I'll actually be able to find it.

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Fortunately C found my train pass in her living room.

On my way to C's in the morning, I discovered that there is, in fact, a tear in the space-time continuum in which all laws of physics and sanity are turned upside down. C lives really really far away from me, like really far, like miles and miles. I decided to take a particular route to her place that I've never used before. So I got on the highway and started switching lanes so I could get over to the left because I have The Road Rage and like to drive fast.

Except I looked over, and there was the exit! The first one after I got on! In fact, the entrance ramp I had just used actually turns into the exit ramp I needed.

Who knew?

The Eloi and Me

This morning I ran into a friend of mine climbing out of her car in the parking lot. Since starting tomorrow I will be joining the vehicular ranks, I said something really intelligent like, "So, you drove?"

To my surprise, she rushed to assure me that in fact she always has ridden the train before, today was just a one-time thing, she'll be back on the train tomorrow but was running late and anyway even though she is paying the parking lot fee she took the free highway instead of the tollway -- all in all, that she wasn't one of "those" people.

Who knew these kinds of subtle social distinctions were being made? Driving and paying the exorbitant parking lot fees means you are one of the privileged elite -- to be envied, perhaps, but also secretly reviled as spoilt and lazy. And those who ride the train, well, we are the salt of the earth. Our hardscrabble lives have made us street-smart and savvy. We arrive each morning a little worse for wear, encased in a layer of train-filth that we bear proudly as the tangible manifestation of our triumph over adversity.

Indeed, upon closer observation the truth was unavoidable. The parking lot did boast an unusual proportion of gleaming late-model luxury cars, out of which materialized a tanned and toned and blond contingent every bit as polished as the Lexuses they drove.

Maybe I should have something really deep and philosophical to say about this phenomenon. But who cares, because NO MORE TRAIN FOR ME! See ya around, Morlocks.

Permission

A few weeks before my first set of finals when I was a 1L, an alum from my law school who graduated with highest honors gave me some great advice.

He said, "You have to give yourself permission, no matter how stressed you are, to do things for yourself. You have to sacrifice some things, but you can study for hours and still have plenty of time every day for the things that matter the most to you. You can exercise every day, spend time with your family and friends, read for pleasure, watch TV, whatever you want -- just not every single one of those things every day.

"Most important," he said, "you have to SLEEP. A full night's sleep is a lot more valuable than the study time you'd gain by giving up sleep."

It was true then, it's true now, and it will be true five days before the bar. :)

Call Me Xena

So a friend has been casting aspersions on women's abilities in the roach-killing arena.

Well, I was horrified tonight to find a massive Godzilla-sized roach in my bathroom -- despite having the exterminator here relatively recently and despite not, you know, living in frigging squalor. My first instinct was to climb on top of the vanity, waving my hands and shrieking. Alas, as there is no one else around to kill said roach, that would mean ceding control of the house to him and resigning myself to a life atop the vanity.

And then the transformation came over me. I was Mr. Hyde, I was the Hulk, I was someone, but certainly not me. All I know is that when my senses were restored, my hair was in disarray, all of my many shoes had been tossed to the four corners of the bedroom, my dogs were cowering in the living room...and there in the closet before me lay the dismembered remains of the former Mr. Roach. I have a vague recollection of roaring in this guttural devil voice, "DIE!! DIE ALREADY! I'M GOING TO KIIIIILLLLLL YOOOOOOOU!!!!!!"

I sincerely hope my neighbors could not hear me.

Joke's on Me?

This Saturday Famous Con Law Prof's coming to teach us constitutional law. I overheard people excitedly buzzing about this back in May. Meanwhile, I keep running across scathing critiques of his presentation on various barblogs. He is, they say, the worst lecturer ever: boring, short, whiny voiced, long-winded, slow-talking, no-fill-in-the-blank using, probably enjoys torturing small animals, etc.

And these people have had his lecture split into two bite-sized pieces mercifully scheduled on consecutive days.

As for us, well, he's here from 9 to 5 on Saturday, aaaaall day long, just us and him and the roaches in the BarBri dungeon.

So here I am, studying most diligently by PUTTING TABS IN MY LECTURE BOOK. Color-coded tabs based on which day the material is tested! Oh, joy! And I come across the con law lecture notes, in which there are no blanks to fill in did I mention, and not much text on each page, and the whole thing is only 49 pages.

HOW, IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS PURE AND GOOD AND RIGHT WITH THE WORLD, DOES HE EXPECT TO NEED EIGHT HOURS TO READ 49 PAGES???? Am I missing something?

Regrets, I Have a Few

It's starting to sink in that I should perhaps have spent less time in law school learning about the law of mummies (the dried-and-bandaged kind, not mummies who love us and make us crumpets) and more time learning stuff on the bar. I didn't because my first-year property professor told us we should take classes that interested us and that we could pick up everything we needed to know in BarBri.

He lied.

You Won't See Me on the Midnight Train to Georgia

I'm over the train. We had a nice thing going there for a while, I thought maybe it would last, but then we hit that one-month mark and all of its quirks began to grate on my nerves and I realized it was time to end it.

Today was really a case in point. A woman got on the train downtown, and given the option of sitting next to the three-ton woman in the electric yellow muumuu or me, she reasonably chose me, as I weigh a mere two tons and was wearing a far more fetching blue muumuu.

She appeared to be about 40 and was dressed very nicely in designer clothes -- too nice for the train. She seemed a little confused, so I concluded she was probably from out of town.

All was well until she began asking me if this train went to a particular stop. I was happy to tell her that it did, the first time she asked. By the sixth time I was far less patient. I guess I can understand her distraction...I would be distracted too if imaginary bugs were climbing all over my skin, forcing me to scratch at myself with a compulsive desperation bordering on mania.

Between that and the nervous bouncing and fidgeting and the loud sniff-sniff-SNIFFS and the yanking and ripping at her hair and the frantic rubbing of her nose and her insistence that it was really VERY IMPORTANT that she meet someone at this particular stop...well, I think we all know what was going on. Clearly the lady had one too many espressos this morning! Ah, Starbucks.

Well, fine, I can put up with one addict jonesing for her next hit, but it's not just that. It's constant, daily aggravation. It's the guy yesterday afternoon who wouldn't let me get off at my stop, to the guy yesterday morning who stood in the aisle next to my seat and shoved his womanly derriere in my face so that it rested on my shoulder and refused to budge despite having ample room in the aisle, to the creepy guy who accidentally-on purpose kept rubbing himself against me notwithstanding my being the two-ton woman (or at least the bar-exam-rage-fueled woman with barely brushed Medusa hair and an overstuffed backpack that could take out a better man than him).

It's the discourtesy, the young men shoving aside elderly pregnant women on crutches so they can snatch the last seat, the inevitable Crazy Person who rants and raves (it was kind of funny when two of them were on at the same time and they started arguing with each other except that each one was yelling about completely different things). It's the cop who comes by to check for tickets who believes it when twenty people in a row tell him they're from out of town and had NO IDEA, Officer, my God who ever heard of such a thing, that they had to PAY to ride the train?

But most of all -- because yes, I would put up with ALL of the above just to save myself the $15/day for gas and tolls and parking -- most of all it's the fact that this whole ordeal takes easily an hour and a half longer every day than driving. That's time I no longer feel I can afford, now that the bar looms on the horizon (a little over a month away, not so very long at all).

Think of me, won't you, next time Crazy Person takes his shirt off.

Go Psych Yourself

The word around BarBri is that certain people are lying about their study habits in order to either 1) freak everyone out, or 2) convince others they shouldn't study. So people who've been observed partying claim to study 12 hours every day, and people who claim to never study are actually members of the psychotic Nazi study group.

People. Seriously. What is wrong with you? Are you that terribly insecure about your own abilities that you honestly think this will help?

Losers.

And while I'm at it, please, for the love of all that is holy, the word is "psych," as in so-old-it's-creaking slang, as in ha-ha I got you PSYCH! Not psyche, a TWO-syllable word that does not mean "psych!" If you type "psyche" in this context you are in no way cool-groovy-hip enough to be using it. Yeah, I'm talking to you, stupid local mini-newspaper that's trying to appeal to twentysomethings on the train. I mock your efforts!

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Update: For the record, here's what I did this afternoon:

Torturous

Back in 1L year, whenever I typed the word "tortious," Word would automatically change it to "torturous."

Yeah. That's about right.

I've been trying to give up the marathon afternoon nap. This has been difficult because I like naps. I want them need them hug them love them want to marry them. But they're bad because a) it means there's no studying taking place, and b) it means I can't fall asleep at night, which means I'm exhausted in the morning, which means I need the marathon afternoon nap. It's a vicious cycle.

Anyway, so I've been trying to jettison them the last couple of weeks. I can pretty much manage to stay awake all day via strategic infusions of caffeine and unhealthy over-exercising. Still can't sleep at night (my inner night owl will not be thwarted...).

If I were on South Park, this is what I'd look like right about now.

Reason # 5,892 That BarBri Sucks

You know how I said that the location is less than ideal?

I found out today that some of the tables there have razor-sharp exposed edges, where the wood has chipped away, that have been slicing people's arms and ripping their clothes when they accidentally lean against it. One woman showed me the fading cut on her hand from an earlier encounter with her table.

Makes my rickety, ant-infested folding table sound pretty good in comparison.

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In other news, Torts I today was pretty fun. It was nice to be back on solid ground after that Commercial Paper unpleasantness last week. And the professor was great. And my opinion has everything nothing to do with the fact that he let us out early.

Damn You, Alito!

So now the exclusionary rule no longer applies to the fruit of knock-and-announce violations. Great. Thanks so much, Supreme Court.

What am I to make of this? If a question on this point arises on the MBE, which presumably was written prior to this decision, how should I answer? Do I assume most MBE-takers will be aware of the change? What if I answer "correctly" as per Hudson v. Michigan, but nobody else does, and the MBE says I'm wrong and the question doesn't get thrown out? Huh? WHAT THEN? WHAT?????!!!!!

Bastards.

(To say nothing of what this means in terms of the continued devaluation of 4th Amendment protections...who has the energy at this point? Besides, if you don't like it, you must be a terrorist.)

Hot Under the Collar

You may recall my air conditioning woes earlier this week. Yesterday it was fixed. I paid the bill, after I had raised the money by promising my future daughters as child-brides to Afghan warlords.

Great, right? Well, I cheerfully walked in this afternoon after a morning of BarHell, only to be assaulted by a wall of heat. Of course the A/C was not working, and no tinkering by my on-call mechanic (AKA my dad, who ran over from the office to help) could fix it.

Five hours and 92 degrees (inside) later, repair dude finally arrived, said the geegaw on the dinglefrick had somehow been knocked loose, though "it couldn't have been us!" Yeah, right, it must have been me on one of my nightly jaunts up in the attic. I was getting ready to serve him up a nice big helping of law school-honed persuasive advocacy (i.e., "nuh-UH!"), but then he oh-so-generously offered to fix it free of charge.

The point? Who said there was a point? Though of course I could not be expected to study in such oppressive conditions....

Haha

Sample bar exam questions.

PSA of the Week

You know how some people insist on pushing the same button you just pushed in the elevator? At least there's been enough eye-rolling about that for people to know they don't have to do it. It doesn't stop them, but they do have the decency to shoot you a sheepish look for doing it (as well they should, as they are outrageously maligning your button-pressing skills).

Great, so people know that repeatedly pushing the button won't make the elevator move any faster. So why do they think that setting the air conditioner temp to "frigid" will cool down the house any faster?

Listen up, folks. Unless you have some highfalutin fancy-schmancy space age A/C unit, this is how it works. Cold air blows until the unit registers a certain temperature -- maybe 1 degree less than the temperature you've selected. Then it turns itself off until the temperature in the house rises to, say, 1 degree above the selected temperature, when it starts running again. And that's it.

So if it's 84 in my house and I have the A/C set to 78, guess what? The air conditioning will keep running and running and running in an attempt to reach 78. This being the summer and the temperature outside being 190 and my A/C apparently running inefficiently (repair dude on his way as I type), this will never happen.

Now, look, you wanna set it to -30 degrees in your own house, woohoo for you. That's your business. Once the A/C is running continuously, turning the temp down won't make your house cool off any faster (I promise you it will not), but who am I to judge?

But you know what happens when you are in my house and you sneak over to MY controls and turn it down to 60 when I'm not looking? Huh? DO YOU?

I wake up at 3 a.m. WITH MY TEETH CHATTERING because, after 10 hours of running continuously, the A/C finally managed to catch up and icicles have formed in my hair and penguins are congregating in my living room and all my liquor has frozen!

Seen on the Train

On the scrolling marquee, with the headline "MOVIE REVIEW": "The Omen is a movie about a boy named Damien whose family is unaware of his destiny."

Um. Oooookay. I could write "reviews" like that.

"Hostel: College grads on a European vacation."

"Harry Potter: A movie about a boy named Harry Potter who discovers a talent for sports."

"Titanic: A girl named Rose moves to America."

Studying

Well, I didn't study today.

Okay, and I didn't study yesterday. Or the day before that...or the day before that...or...ever....

I wonder if this is a bad thing?

(And who wants to bet this post will haunt me when I fail the bar?)

Up and Running

This isn't really the first post on this blog, but I've decided to repost some things from my old blog. Original posting dates have been recreated.

I finally got around to creating a blog. Every other possible title was taken, but then my friend C suggested using the name of my favorite drink.

But this blog isn't only about my raging alcoholism. I'm currently studying for the July 2006 bar exam and suffering through the hell that is BarBri. I spend endless hours riding the train. And I watch a lot of home design shows on HGTV.