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.