Fire, brimstone and the end of the semester

Just came from the coffee shop a block over. It's become a semi-routine to go over every "morning" (noon) with the dog and get a cafe au lait to start my study day. Every day, the place is packed full of future dentists and doctors, philosophy professors, and today's movers and shakers in the urban business world. I usually take my coffee to go because it's so damn hard to find a place to sit, and even when I do, the conversations going on around me are too irresistible not to eavesdrop.

How odd. Today, I went in, and the place was completely empty. Except for the guy behind the counter, it was just me and the dog in there. I felt a pang of jealousy, because all those other people must be done with their finals, back to work or off to play for their winter break. And here I am, trying to jumpstart myself into studying for Crim. At least this is the least difficult of my exams (or so I think). After Friday at 12:30, it'll all be over.

I almost made it through the first semester without breaking down. I really felt like this was one of those "fun" challenges. This past weekend, with T out of town, I got a lot of work done and drove myself only a little crazy by staying cloistered up in the apartment all day and night. Or so I thought. When T came home on Sunday night, I promptly melted down. And not in the sweet, "oh, please help me, this is so hard," way. I think there may be some smoke stains on the wall, because I'm pretty sure I was spewing fire and brimstone with my breath. This was the kind of meltdown chock full of comments like, "This was all one big mistake! I'm sorry I ever decided to go to law school!" and "Excuuuuuse ME for not having my head buried in the books all day every day. How dare you tell me how to spend my time!" (To an innocent comment from my better half about wanting to take advantage of our shared down time to go on the occasional date.)

This semester has overstayed its welcome. And now I know why people say the first year is so hard. Thank God I can see the light.