Sunday, July 15, 2007

Busy, busy, busy, ...

Busy as a Bar Exam Candidate.

This last week is going to be frenetic. I'm taking my study program on the road. My study partner and one of her friends are going to meet me somewhere and we're going to go over all of the subjects one-by-one and piece-by-piece.

One subject, one outline, one essay, one issue, one rule at a time.

She's going to do the first day of the PMBR 3-day tomorrow, then after that it's brainstorming all day every day until the exam. Yee haw!

Should be fun.

Seriously, it should be fun.

Okay. Alright. Let's see... I know, "It won't be as miserable as a bikini wax." Not that I've ever had a bikini wax, but I can imagine that one of those would be more painful than this is going to be. Maybe.

Anyway, the Wondrous Glory that is the California Bar Exam is supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Isn't it? We're simply going to do everything in our power, from here on out, to make sure it is just that.

A once-in-a-lifetime experience.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello GP and everyone else. I suppose its crunch time now. I would like to thank you and everyone for setting up these blogs. I currently live in Chicago and am moving to SF in September, so I am taking the exam in SF using the ipod barbri course. It is very difficult studying when nobody else is around, feeling like you are going through it alone, which is why your blogs have been invaluable through this process. I wanted to share a story of my own that you may all get a kick out of.

My lease ended at the end of May so I moved back to my parents house in the suburbs to study for the exam. Its not the biggest house and the only place to get away is the basement. I have taken it over the last few months and have my piles of outlines neatly scattered all around the floor.

I decided on Saturday night to go to a concert with my Fiance and some friends to try to have a little fun, and get refreshed for the final sprint. When I returned my parents were standing at the door looking sheepishly at me and I knew something was wrong…

We have a 17 year old mini dachshund, who wears diapers and has like doggy dimensia b.c. she just walks aimlessly around the house all day. I know pathetic, but she has been such a great family dog. So my parents also decided to go out Saturday night, and left my brother home with the dogs who passed out by 8pm after a rough previous night. So the dog was walking around and fell down the stairs into the basement. She cannot get back up the stairs, so she just began her pacing back and forth. I mean we’re talking this dog walks miles per day going nowhere.

So what my parents told me when I got home was that she had fallen down the stairs, and then pooped. She then proceeded to walk through the poop and walk all over the basement. By the time they got home the original pile of poop was no more, and instead there was a thin cover of dog poop covering the entire floor, and what’s worse, my neatly piled outlines, CMRs, and lecture notes, were now scattered across the entire floor covered in footprints of doggy-doo.

I spent the entire night and all day yesterday cleaning up, washing what I could. I took the stuff over to Kinkos and got it photocopied and told the clerk, they are a little dirty so you might want to wash your hands afterward.

So if you are taking the exam in SF, and see some dude studying materials that look like it has ink blots all over it, that aint ink!

Anyway, just thought I’d share my own personal horror story with you all. I took and passed Illinois last year and met my finace who was sitting next to me at the bar, so its not all bad. Thanks again for your blogs which kept me sane through this process. They were very interesting, and real, and many were quite funny. Good luck on the exam!

The Grand Poobah said...

That's pretty funny story! Not "ha ha" funny, but a "Gee, that must have been a drag and I'm glad it happened to someone else." sort of funny. (;-)>

My tutor tells us that we have to prepare for the exam while dodging the hand grenades tossed our direction and the land mines that appear in our paths. It sounds like you were blindsided by one.

And it makes the assorted coffee and chili-dog stains on my papers look positively attractive in comparison!

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I started this blog, but it's turned into a very positive experience for me. The fact that others have benefited as well is icing on the cake.

Thanks very much for your kind comments, and good luck on the 24th!

Richard said...

wow crazy!! I'm taking this show on the road to some extent too now - well to the air for a bit! lol. Can't believe that timer - it seems like just yesterday it was around 30 ish days to go!

Here's to ONCE in a lifetime!!!!

calbar blondie said...

GP,
Let us know what your study pal thought of the PMBR simulated. I thought it was very tough; the fact patterns were long and the answer choices were nearly all hornbook-ish. I think they are giving us a good amount of conditioning for what lies ahead, though.

The Grand Poobah said...

Well... your timing couldn't be better. I have here in front of me the P.M. set of 100 questions. She went down there, picked up her materials, and left. We're doing them 100 at a time, she's got the A.M. questions, then we're switching sets.

And I think they suck out loud.

I'm missing quite a few. I'm not sure of the exact number because we've only spoken briefly over the phone, and she has the answer book. But of the ones we've gone over, the answer invariably cites a case. And it's invariably a case with which I am unacquainted.

So, if the Bar MBEs use fact patterns specifically drawn from obscure cases, I'm majorly hosed.

I'll be the guy walking around with the name tag that reads "Hosed, Majorly."

"Hi. The name's Hosed. Majorly Hosed. I have a license to hose up the MBEs. Nice to freakin' meet you. See you again in February."

b l a h . . .

calbar blondie said...

Well, I got an "ok" raw score according to their scale. I have to say, I think their practice exam is harder than the real thing(having seen THAT nasty thing before!) There are so many hornbook distinctions on this practice exam. The real exam has many that are straightforward, especially the Contracts, Torts and Conlaw ones.
The other thing you'll notice is that almost every fact pattern is very long in this practice exam. In order to finish on time, I had to simply guess at several of the mortgage ones in the PM session.
Either way, I'm going over each question point by point. It's a good exercise.
Don't know if sitting in a room with 300 plus people yesterday was; there was a lot of sneezing and coughing and they had purposely turned the airconditioning up to simulate exam conditions. Blah is right.

Law-Rah said...

All out Brazilian wax is even a cakewalk compared to this. Just sayin'

The Grand Poobah said...

blondie: I almost decided to blow off the rest of the questions. Then I looked at why I missed a couple of them and decided that I should go ahead and do them so I wouldn't make the same mistakes on the real exam.

law-rah: I think I'll schedule all of the dental work I've been putting off, for the week right after the exam. My perspective should be optimal for that type of thing.