hang a star on THIS, asshole

The title of the post is in reference to a BarBri lecturer that some of
you will recall (the Yellow Magic Marker moment guy). I actually have no
problem with him, per se. I like his voice and his mannerisms, and he
gives a great outline and tells you to look at nothing else but that
outline after class. That's helpful - a finite body of information. My
complaint was that he then spent the class reading us the outline, which
inevitably caused me to tune out. So BarBri guy - my ire is not directed
at you, because I like you. You just had such neat little catch phrases
that I'm now going to adopt for my own disgruntled purposes.

Tangent - a lot of people are getting to this site by searching for
"barbri" "why barbri sucks" "fuck barbri" etc. I have to say, there is
absolutely no way I, myself, could have done this without Barbri. They
have a little schedule planned out, it's all quite organized, you know
well in advance what you're supposed to do and when. Being as anal as I
am, I like this type of structure. That's not to say that I followed it -
I'm pretty sure it's impossible in the amount of time allotted. But they
give you what you need to do well, and it's up to you to do something with
it. So, right now, before I fail the bar, I will say, I'm not
particularly unhappy with BarBri.

Anyway.

I have bags under my eyes. I have wrinkles. I'm up to one pot of coffee
in the morning, and down to 6 hours of sleep at night (which for me is the
absolute bare minimum necessary for functioning). My workouts have shrunk
to about 30-40 minutes, 4 days a week. However, my errands are getting
done in a remarkably timely manner, mostly because it's a good break from
studying. It helps me clear my head, gets me out of my chair, and makes
me feel like I've accomplished something. Look! Clean laundry. Look!
Dishes are done. Look! I just paid my bills. Look! I just ate an
entire bag of lime tortilla chips. And I still can't remember for the
life of me what the fuck the test is for applying which state's law in
which type of case. Domiciled in Guam, residence in California, defendant
in Wisconsin, excellent cheesesteaks in Philly, Red Sox are in Chicago,
accident happened during the in-flight movie somewhere over Nebraska,
apply the law of Tijuana. Whatever.

And the job thing - ugh. I keep getting phone calls from one job's area
code, and then I get all excited, because I'm convinced that since they
promised to offer me a job back in March, they're actually going to follow
through with that promise. Now that it's July, I'm starting to think that
I'm wrong. But anyway, I keep getting phone calls, and I get all excited,
and then I check the voicemail, and it's BarBri just calling to make sure
I'm ok, see how things are going, wish me good luck on the bar. STOP
CALLING ME, because you're getting me all worked up over nothing. After
I'm disappointed that it's just BarBri, I start worrying about the job
thing again, instead of worrying about the fact that I will never be a
licensed attorney, and that maybe law school was a horrid mistake anyway.

Move over Beauty and the Geek. I've often said that law school would make
a fascinating and ridiculous FOX reality TV show, and I still maintain
that's the case. You'd have to edit out a LOT of dead time over bar
review, but there are those priceless moments that just illuminate the
absurd intensity and coping mechanisms of people studying for the bar,
that I think would make for great entertainment. I myself refuse to speak
to anyone during the day, and to enforce that, I've started walking around
with my iPod on. I'm all like, "oops, sorry can't talk, I would totally
but I have headphones on. maybe next time?" I've also started taking the
rarely-used stairwells in the law school, and plan out my route from point
a to point b to afford as little interaction as possible with other
humans. I've found a little hidden area to do studying, and I'm camped
out there all day, only emerging to pee and eat. And surf the net.

Time to retreat back underground.