Post #401

I passed the bar! I'm going to be an attorney, it turns out! An immigration attorney, I might add. :)t

Professional responsibility

I hope I have it. Because tomorrow morning, a mere 10 days after completing the dreaded, seizure-inducing-to-think-about bar exam, I am taking its much tamer, annoying little cousin: the MPRE. Yep. I was that person our Dean warned us not to be, the one that ignored emails and forgot deadlines and has thus been required to study for the week after the bar, while all my friends are off celebrating.

Ok, so I haven't been studying all week. But I have been studying all most of the day, yesterday and today, so that I feel somewhat more confident about knocking out this little portion of the wall that stands between me and my professional career.

So to recap:
Last Wednesday = last day of the bar
Friday = MPRE
Monday = starting new job

Yikes! Luckily, September 11 = week at the beach. I can not wait.

new haircut new job new chapter

yeap. i finished the bar, for the first time ever, and hopefully the last. and a week from now, i'll be starting my new job as a law clerk for a small immigration group that i shall call The Gang henceforth, for lack of a better descriptor and for anonymity's sake. if i pass the bar, i am anticipating being a young associate attorney, but that's for chillier days of late fall. for now, i plan to walk to the office and do my time as a good little legal researcher and client handler and so on and so forth. i consider myself extremely, incredibly, horrendously lucky to have found a job, all thing considered. and to be able to work in my field, in the kind of small office environment i was hoping for, and to be able to maintain my car-free lifestyle? all blessings that i thank God for. because i sure didn't do anything to deserve them. but i'll do my best to use my blessings for good things, and to remain grateful.

these are exciting times, in so many ways, on the home-front. because of bar stress and all that, i've not updated on the housing / apartment hunt situation. but we are hoping to have a sweet new place in the same neighborhood sometime within the next two months. we managed to negotiate a fair deal with our landlords of the past 3 years, in which they agreed to let us move out whenever we want, as long as we take the responsibility of finding a new tenant that they approve of. so we're not bound for another year at this point, and they don't have to worry about us ditching them in the dead of winter with no prospects for a new tenant. with the new job, the new paycheck, the new apartment (hopefully. soon), the new lease on life, and the new haircut for the first time in OVER A YEAR, i'm feeling nervous and excited at once. things are heating up around here, i'm grabbing my saddle and holding on for the ride.

One day down.

Day #1 down. Essays are over. I bombed the first part of the day. I have a vague recollection of panicking on the first essay and then my memory goes blank until lunch. Second half wasn't as bad. I felt like I knew what I was talking about, understood the call of the question and mostly remembered the rules. It was all about racing the clock on that part.

Tomorrow is the MBE. Tonight, a glass of wine.

the suspense is killing me

But I wasn't finished! I had so much left to do! There's so much left unspoken between me and my bar lecturers. I am fighting SO HARD against the urge to stay up all night cramming. So hard. I want to puke. Gah.

Fear and loathing in a firetrap apartment

It's less than 36 hours until the bar exam. Holy You Know What.

As I told T over dinner tonight, I am alternating between terror and tranquility, feeling petrified and feeling peaceful... afraid...and accepting.

But he doesn't need me to tell him that. He's seen Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde both out in full force over the past weekend. Yesterday, he came home and started trying to fix our broken-in-a-three-digit-heatwave A/C while I was stretched across the floor listening to a lecture on corporate officers for the umpteenth time. "T..." I shouted, as he vacuumed dog fur from the vents, "what you're doing is REALLY ANNOYING!"

"I KNOW!" he called back. "I'm just trying to help, you know."

At which point, I wanted to hurl my giant book of MBE questions at him, but refrained probably out of heat exhaustion rather than actual self-control. Five minutes later, I'm pretty sure we were both asleep. At 6:00 p.m.

Between the heat and the stress, it's been a real bucket of sunshine up in these parts. I just can't wait 'til it's all over. And I pray I won't have to do it again.

BETTER NOT TELL YOU NOW

"Am I going to pass the bar exam?" I asked the Magic Google Ball.

The Magic Google Ball responded:



I can't write anything at all right now, but I did discover this gem from Thanks, But No Thanks. If you want an update on me or any other loved one (including yourself, if you are an unfortunate bar candidate also trolling around like a spider-bot looking for answers), I recommend clicking over and reading it.

Last stop before 30

Hey! So in three days, I turn 30. And I hope that I remember to pack a pen and a journal to write about and reflect on turning 30. But I'm not doing it here. Maybe when I get back.

Instead, I'm trying to focus on studying for the state-specific portions of the Bar, and kind of obsessively calculating in the back of my mind at all times what the likelihood is that I'll not pass.

Tomorrow, though, we're headed back down to VA to see my best friend's baby turn 1 (!) and then go camping. Yay! We did that last year for my birthday, and it was awesome. Maybe a little tradition in the making? Who knows.

Oh yeah, and I pretty much didn't do any of the things left to do on my 30 before 30 list since the last time I posted. But that's cool. It just gives me some things to work on over the next year!

Another Friday night during bar prep

Dinner tonight is shells & alfredo sauce (aka mac 'n' cheese) with fried (fake) chicken cutlets. I am letting T nap while I prepare this half-baked (heh) dinner. Afterward, we are hitting the road, along with the dog. I decided that instead of staying home to study this weekend, while he's in Richmond, I'm going to go to my parents' house so the dog and I can have some open air and greenery around us. I'm packing up all my Kaplan books and my laptop, so I don't miss a lecture or a quiz or homework assignment, though I'd be lying to everyone involved if I said I was going to do everything I'm supposed to while I'm gone. I can't even keep up from home.

Oh well. I took a practice MBE earlier this week. Aside from the grueling tedium of sitting for six hours answering multiple choice questions, it wasn't that terrible. I managed to hit the supposed goal posts for this far along in the course. But we're half way through, which means it's getting closer to the Big Day. Errrr... scary!

One thing is for sure, though. I am lucky to have this wonderful man in my life who works hard every day to make sure we have money for groceries and gas and electricity and the occasional dinner out, so I don't have to totally freak about money while I study. It helps that he's handsome and has a good sense of humor too. Love ya, T!

Bar classes: to take or not to take?

So bar prep is weird, and has me thinking back to all that conflicting advice about how I should - no shouldn't! - no, I really should enroll in bar classes my second year - AND third! - no, no, I should just take what I want and not worry about the bar. I'm just going to relearn it in bar prep class anyway. But if I know what's good for me I have to take tax - corporations - trusts and estates - crim pro because I'm going to need it for the bar.

Uh huh. Clear as mud.

I'm about three weeks into bar prep classes now, and what I've found is that I am profoundly glad, in a way that is quite shocking to me, that I took advanced contracts my last semester. I absolutely hated it by the end of April, and was convinced that would be part of my downfall in law school. But now that I've graduated, and I'm listening to long, boring lectures about promissory estoppel and third-party beneficiaries and firm offers, I am SO HAPPY that it's all so fresh in my memory. I find myself just knowing the law to some of this stuff, without really needing to rely on the gazillions of mnemonics and fill-in-the-blank worksheets that Kaplan throws at you. I'm surprising myself, and feel a deep sense of relief in this moment. This is because I only got 3 wrong out of 17 practice questions I just did. Tomorrow will be another day.

On the other hand, I am convinced I had one of the best evidence teachers ever, and I felt really confident about my ability to master hearsay exceptions. Yet, the more I pay attention in bar lectures, the more confused I get. It's almost like I want to just tune it all out and stick with what I know. But that's not working. I took evidence my fall semester of 2L year, and despite feeling on top of the world at the time, I'm quite rusty. I don't trust myself to just KNOW this stuff, and rightly so, because I'm doing just over 50% on my practice problems.

The one cliche about bar prep that I heard during law school that has turned out to be very true is this: Bar review is just that - a review. Don't plan to learn the material there for the first time. It's too much material in too little time.

So in the end, yeah, I guess I come out in favor of taking the bar prep classes, but maybe just the ones that interest you. Cause I sure as hell didn't take taxation. Ask me if my opinion has changed after we do that portion of the review.

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Ok, I take it back. Studying for the bar isn't all it's cracked up to be, whatsoever. Or should I say, it IS all it's cracked up to be...and that's not much.

But whatever, I'm not here to complain about bar review. I guess I'm just here to hold a place for the blog for whenever I can summon the energy, interest and self-awareness needed to continue posting. For now, I'm going to slink back into silence.

Studying for the bar now.

I am actually studying for the Bar. I'm actually studying for the Bar! Woo-eee! I feel like I've arrived :)

Hmm. Ask me again in four weeks. I suspect I'll be singing a different tune. I just can't believe I'm now doing what all those law blawgers were doing when I started following them 3 or 4 years ago, as I was considering whether to apply. Sweet!

Graduation day

I graduate today, and it's a surreal feeling. Seems like just a year ago that I was living in Richmond with T, working at my old HR job and fooling around with LSAT books. We lived in a bigger apartment, had a porch, weren't married, had two paychecks, I was bored with my work, we were close to family, T ran a printing press every day and we were four years younger.

I never, even then, would've seen myself as a "law student" much less a "lawyer". Throughout the entire application process, right up until the first day of school, I went through the motions with my tongue planted in my cheek. It all felt silly, almost. Buying a cheap backpack at Target with T the night before my first classes, because the messenger bag I'd used for work wasn't gonna cut it with all those case books I had to lug around. Getting used to all that free time during the day, when I could be at coffee shops or chatting with my new classmates. All those meet-and-greets with professors and other students, like I was back in college. Oh wait. I WAS back in college. It just didn't seem real. And once again, it doesn't seem real.

In between, I got accustomed to the classes, the free time, the other students, the backpack, the test anxiety, the casebooks and the latin. It almost began to feel completely normal. This really hit home a couple weeks ago when I made a dark joke about the death penalty to a group of non-law school friends and was met with concerned looks. I quickly went to explain myself: "Sorry, I'm in a habeas corpus class this semester. Humor is a coping mechanism." My friends looked at me like I had two heads and then proceeded to make fun of me for the rest of the evening for using the phrase "habeas corpus" in casual conversation. I don't blame them.

Anyway, I guess I was gonna get three years old whether or not I went to law school. But now that I'm graduating, it's as good a time as any to reflect on being three years older. I remember thinking, at the beginning of this journey, "Woah... I'm gonna be getting ready to turn 30 the year I graduate," and being horrified at how old that would be. I've gotten used to the concept of turning 30, along with a lot of other things. Unlike three years ago, when I first matriculated, I have no idea what the next three years will bring. I'm back to the normal adult world of choices and job hunting and making a paycheck and charting a path to the future without a map.

But before all that, I have to go celebrate with all the family that's come into town, and then do one last final test of endurance: the bar exam. So for the next 6? 8? weeks I'll be holed up cramming bits of knowledge into my brain on a tightly planned schedule. And come August, I'll be let loose into the world again.