Living Blank-to-Blank…

So, a little more than a week into the bar classes and there is really only one word to describe things—painful. Around 400 law students sitting in folding chairs, eyes glazed over while some professor reads an outline with military precision, their voice barely audible over the hum of the air conditioning and other miscellaneous noises. A principle of law is recited, and then an example is offered to highlight the principle in practice, over and over, until the entire exercise becomes almost unbearable. Imagine being read instructions for hours at a time, filling in the operative terms.

The 750 page fill-in-the-blank workbook renders all thinking completely unnecessary, though in theory we are “engaged” in the material. Today it was criminal law, and in 3 hours we covered the same amount of material covered in an entire semester of first year lectures.

The only thing one can do is succumb. If your mind wanders, you miss a blank, and the blank is left empty, and then you better hope someone on the left or right of you filled in their blank, or you are screwed. After each hour we get our 10-minute break, precious time spent wandering around the warehouse aimlessly, chatting with other students about how “this sucks” and “man, doesn’t this blow?”

When class is over, students frantically leap out of their chairs and try to contain the Fred Flintstone-like excitement that overcomes the mob as they hurry to their cars. There is but one stoplight for the parking lot, and the exodus is not for faint of heart. Four hours of filling-in-the-blank leads to some vicious maneuvering where pedestrians stand little chance for survival.

June is around the corner. The bar exam is still something in the distant future, and the evenings are free for engaging in denial or considering alternative career plans. I hear there is a Wizard Academy in north Austin… hmmmm.

But wait... there's more.

I have experienced a few soul-crushing moments in my life. Derek Fisher's .4 shot against the Spurs. The death of my first cat. The results of recent presidential elections. I'll admit that my life could not really be classified as difficult, but like most Americans I have the ability to revel in self-pity and despair regardless of my true circumstances.

The most recent soul-crushing moment occurred today at approximately 3:16pm when I received a large box, weighing approximately 40 lbs., full of study materials for the July Bar Exam. Large, thick books full of things I maybe knew once during my first year of law school, or from classes I avoided taking so that I could, I don't know, keep hidden the deep mystery of what a "secured transaction" was.

Graduation was Saturday. The future looked promising. Until I walked into the enormous concrete warehouse that will be the site of our bar prep lectures. Rows and rows of plastic tables, barren walls, like an East German pep rally circa 1974. There are 64 days until the exam begins. Assignment #1 - Sales and Contracts. Let the fun begin...

DONE.

Man I love that word... done. done. done. finished. no more. no mas. no more library. no more shitty coffee from the coffee stand. no more parking illegally all day. no more exams, no more emails from the Dean about pencils or ghetto parties, done, no more being a student. It would feel ever better if the past year had not essentially been an exercise in avoiding work, but it feels good nonetheless. Peace to all the 1Ls and 2Ls who remain, peace to the mentors and the law review kids, and peace to the albino squirrels and the people at lava java who cheefully deliver good tacos. Off to to west Texas for a few days then on to Denver, then graduation. then the bar. booooo.