Am I late on picking up on this?
Supreme Court Rules Death Penalty Is 'Totally Badass'
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
…And One to Go
Dear MBE,
We are officially broken up.
I’m sick of your mind games and the way you treat me. I work and work and work my fingers to the bone and still it’s never good enough for you.
Well, I don’t need you in my life anymore. So here is your Statute of Frauds back. I put all your Recording Statutes in a box (to the left, to the left). I was going to keep the First Amendment you gave me that day at Starbucks, but it brings up too many bad memories.
Please don’t ever talk to me again.
Love,
Cella
Actually, today was not the worst thing ever. It was not so awesome that I even want to entertain the idea of doing it again, but I sit here with at least a fond hope that I am still passing the bar.
I finished both the morning and the afternoon sessions in about an hour each. I went over my answers and counted all the As, Bs, Cs and Ds because I couldn’t get that thing out of my head that the BarBri lady said about them all showing up equally (i.e., each answer is correct 25 times out of 100). I’m not saying this as advice because it will probably screw with your head much more than it will ever help. Because I was way short on 1 letter, but of course I didn’t know which answers were wrong. So you start thinking “Well, if I change my answer to this question- because I might be totally wrong seeing as I know jack squat about veto power, if that’s even what the question is asking me- then I’m closer to 25 Bs but now I’m short a D. And I could change the answer to that question, but that will ruin my balance of As.” And on and on and on.
So I just turned it in and went to lunch, which was at the fine dining establishment known as My Car. Or, My Sister’s Car Since I’m Borrowing It. So I ate from my cooler of apples and peanut butter and hummus and pita and looked at my notes from practice questions until I realized that really, I know what I’m gonna know and I’m not learning anything new. Partly cuz I can’t focus, partly because I don’t care so much anymore, who knows.
Back from lunch, they didn’t open the doors at 12:45 as they had promised so we’re all stuffed into the un-air-conditioned hallway in the heat. And I am sorry, Texas Tech T-Shirt Guy, but Man Sandals (“Mandals”) + Heat = Nasty Sweaty Boy Foot Stink. Also, you wore jorts. Both days. …I’m just saying.
And I’m also just saying that some girl wore a “I Own Blackacre” shirt. To the Bar Exam. I assume on purpose. I also assume that everyone who wore a t-shirt with their law school emblazoned upon it also did that on purpose. Especially those from schools not within the vicinity because my guess is that you are staying in a hotel like I am, and that you packed, like I did, three shirts. But you appear to have different criteria for shirt selection that I. Or, alternatively, you own three shirts.
And one girl wore her Shitty Law School Law Review shirt. And then I died of barfness.
We are officially broken up.
I’m sick of your mind games and the way you treat me. I work and work and work my fingers to the bone and still it’s never good enough for you.
Well, I don’t need you in my life anymore. So here is your Statute of Frauds back. I put all your Recording Statutes in a box (to the left, to the left). I was going to keep the First Amendment you gave me that day at Starbucks, but it brings up too many bad memories.
Please don’t ever talk to me again.
Love,
Cella
Actually, today was not the worst thing ever. It was not so awesome that I even want to entertain the idea of doing it again, but I sit here with at least a fond hope that I am still passing the bar.
I finished both the morning and the afternoon sessions in about an hour each. I went over my answers and counted all the As, Bs, Cs and Ds because I couldn’t get that thing out of my head that the BarBri lady said about them all showing up equally (i.e., each answer is correct 25 times out of 100). I’m not saying this as advice because it will probably screw with your head much more than it will ever help. Because I was way short on 1 letter, but of course I didn’t know which answers were wrong. So you start thinking “Well, if I change my answer to this question- because I might be totally wrong seeing as I know jack squat about veto power, if that’s even what the question is asking me- then I’m closer to 25 Bs but now I’m short a D. And I could change the answer to that question, but that will ruin my balance of As.” And on and on and on.
So I just turned it in and went to lunch, which was at the fine dining establishment known as My Car. Or, My Sister’s Car Since I’m Borrowing It. So I ate from my cooler of apples and peanut butter and hummus and pita and looked at my notes from practice questions until I realized that really, I know what I’m gonna know and I’m not learning anything new. Partly cuz I can’t focus, partly because I don’t care so much anymore, who knows.
Back from lunch, they didn’t open the doors at 12:45 as they had promised so we’re all stuffed into the un-air-conditioned hallway in the heat. And I am sorry, Texas Tech T-Shirt Guy, but Man Sandals (“Mandals”) + Heat = Nasty Sweaty Boy Foot Stink. Also, you wore jorts. Both days. …I’m just saying.
And I’m also just saying that some girl wore a “I Own Blackacre” shirt. To the Bar Exam. I assume on purpose. I also assume that everyone who wore a t-shirt with their law school emblazoned upon it also did that on purpose. Especially those from schools not within the vicinity because my guess is that you are staying in a hotel like I am, and that you packed, like I did, three shirts. But you appear to have different criteria for shirt selection that I. Or, alternatively, you own three shirts.
And one girl wore her Shitty Law School Law Review shirt. And then I died of barfness.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
One Day Down
Even though today was a half-day it was still brutal. First of all, I’m taking it on my computer. There’s only two locations in the state that allow computers, so we’re in this massive Exhibition Hall. I kinda feel they probably show tractors or something in it when we’re not taking bar exams in there. My tablemates and I estimated about 400 people (we couldn’t see all the way to the other side).
A couple people at the table next to me showed up literally at 7:58 for the 8 am test. I don’t know what you thought you were stuffing into your brain in those last five minutes, but I doubt it was more valuable than the peace of mind of having your computer turned on and the exam software up and running by the time the test started.
One person at my table didn’t show up at all.
Then there was the epic FAIL of everyone trying to save their tests to the jump drives provided to us. This took roughly 20 minutes, all the while we’re bouncing in our seats doing the peepee dance because they wouldn’t let us leave for what the Proctor kept calling our “Comfort Break.”
She made “comfort” sound like “soft blanket, nice hug” type of comfort but I’m pretty sure the Bar Examiners meant “physical relief from the need to pee” type comfort.
Upon return from our Comfort Break, we were chastised by the Proctor again. This time, she was “very disappointed” that we had chosen “not to pay attention the first time” and apparently some people tried to go outside for a cigarette. And because of our atrocious behavior, these “Comfort Breaks may have to be discontinued in the future.”
I finished the Procedure and Evidence part in a little over an hour. I sat there for a minute or two, but I really didn’t have anything else to say. If I didn’t know it, I didn’t know it. If I did, I said everything I could about it. A couple things were totally out of the blue, and some stuff I was sure would be on there wasn’t. So even though I had 30 minutes left, I turned it in and went home. I was hungry, anyway.
A couple people at the table next to me showed up literally at 7:58 for the 8 am test. I don’t know what you thought you were stuffing into your brain in those last five minutes, but I doubt it was more valuable than the peace of mind of having your computer turned on and the exam software up and running by the time the test started.
One person at my table didn’t show up at all.
Then there was the epic FAIL of everyone trying to save their tests to the jump drives provided to us. This took roughly 20 minutes, all the while we’re bouncing in our seats doing the peepee dance because they wouldn’t let us leave for what the Proctor kept calling our “Comfort Break.”
She made “comfort” sound like “soft blanket, nice hug” type of comfort but I’m pretty sure the Bar Examiners meant “physical relief from the need to pee” type comfort.
Upon return from our Comfort Break, we were chastised by the Proctor again. This time, she was “very disappointed” that we had chosen “not to pay attention the first time” and apparently some people tried to go outside for a cigarette. And because of our atrocious behavior, these “Comfort Breaks may have to be discontinued in the future.”
I finished the Procedure and Evidence part in a little over an hour. I sat there for a minute or two, but I really didn’t have anything else to say. If I didn’t know it, I didn’t know it. If I did, I said everything I could about it. A couple things were totally out of the blue, and some stuff I was sure would be on there wasn’t. So even though I had 30 minutes left, I turned it in and went home. I was hungry, anyway.
Monday, July 28, 2008
It'll Only Hurt for a Minute
Good luck to everyone taking the bar tomorrow! I'm safely holed away in my hotel room, after a stressful weekend of not having my admissions ticket (have it now!), almost getting on the wrong plane (didn't!), getting here and settling in (...am?).
I've only stayed in a hotel by myself twice before (callback interview and all-attorney firm weekend), but never for three nights. It's weird, sort of lonely but also kinda freeing.
Not much more to say than that. I've studied and now I'm tired. I'm ready to go take the test, which is not the same thing as knowing enough, but what can you do? I was so stressed this weekend that I had to take my anxiety meds (see above about having no admissions ticket, etc), but now I'm just ready to get into bed, look over my notes and get some sleep.
The good thing is that tomorrow is just a half day, comprised of the two parts of the test that matter least. One, I'm not worried about at all. The other, I don't know enough about. My strategy is to do well enough in the other three sections that the procedure and evidence section isn't much more than a place to pick up some extra points.
But, I ramble. The Tylenol PM is kicking in (taken just in case the anxiety attacks come back, so I will sleep through them). Good luck again to everyone. My friends, I know you are stressed but I also know you are smart. You will pass. I will pass. We will all move on.
I've only stayed in a hotel by myself twice before (callback interview and all-attorney firm weekend), but never for three nights. It's weird, sort of lonely but also kinda freeing.
Not much more to say than that. I've studied and now I'm tired. I'm ready to go take the test, which is not the same thing as knowing enough, but what can you do? I was so stressed this weekend that I had to take my anxiety meds (see above about having no admissions ticket, etc), but now I'm just ready to get into bed, look over my notes and get some sleep.
The good thing is that tomorrow is just a half day, comprised of the two parts of the test that matter least. One, I'm not worried about at all. The other, I don't know enough about. My strategy is to do well enough in the other three sections that the procedure and evidence section isn't much more than a place to pick up some extra points.
But, I ramble. The Tylenol PM is kicking in (taken just in case the anxiety attacks come back, so I will sleep through them). Good luck again to everyone. My friends, I know you are stressed but I also know you are smart. You will pass. I will pass. We will all move on.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
I Know Why the Caged Bird Spends So Much Time on Facebook
If it’s not been painfully clear by now, I am deep in bar study hell. And what fluctuates between more hellish and a mild reprieve from pangs of death by bar is that I am doing it alone in my room with an iPod. That means that every morning I get up, make coffee and sit at my breakfast room table with an iPod and the 40 lbs of books that BarBri sent me. I wear little headphones, even though I’m the only one in the house, and sometimes I chuckle a little to myself at the things the voices in my head say. I was trying to remember some of them so that when TF asked me how my day was, I could say, “Well, I’m listening to torts and the lecturer had this hysterical story about trespass to chattels. And yesterday the guy doing Crim Pro called the defendant a ‘little bastard’! Can you believe it? Oh, we just laughed and laughed!”
TF asked me what studying for the bar was like, if it was anything like studying for finals. I think he was trying to prepare himself for Barmageddon. “Will there by crying?” Yes. “What about wallowing in self-pity?” Very much yes. “Throwing things?” Mmmmaybe. “Including tantrums?” Oh. Yes.
Studying for the bar is kind of like studying for finals, if you were taking all your finals at the same time and some more finals on classes you never had because the thought of taking classes with names like Commercial Paper and Oil and Gas made you put sharp, hot, stabby things in your eyes.
And after a week of sitting at my desk, or the table, sometimes the couch, with my book and headphones, I developed pain in my neck and head so bad that I almost puked. TF made me get a deep tissue massage. Now I can’t move my head at all. I have had deep tissue massages before on my leg, when I was going to a chiropractor. I know they hurt and I know they can leave you bruised. But it’s one thing when it’s your leg, it’s another when it’s your friggin neck.
I will say (proudly) that I didn’t do one embarrassing thing during my massage. This may be the first. Although, I will say the moment I laid down I automatically reviewed all I had eaten in the past 12 hours.
So that is where I am and what I’m doing. I can’t say I expect too much excitement to happen here in my apartment, but I promise to be on the lookout. I do try to venture into modern society at least once a day, but I’m sort of embarrassed by the number of times I visit
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Would you look at him? Sittin' there with his hooter scrapin' away at that book!*
K did a little list of books and out of curiosity, I did it for myself. Bold for the ones I've read, underlined for the ones I read for school, italics for the ones I never finished. Also copying K, I bolded and underlined the ones I read for school but then re-read (or, actually read) for myself.
Most of the ones I never finished are still sitting on my bookshelf with their bookmarks in place. But I'm reading White Noise right now, so they will stay where they are. BTW, the front desk guy at the vet's told me White Noise was his favorite book and I think nearly wet himself or started crying when he saw me with it. So....yay?
*This is from one of me favorite movies. Many, many cookies if you can guess it. The hint is that you have to pronounce it "booo-k."
Most of the ones I never finished are still sitting on my bookshelf with their bookmarks in place. But I'm reading White Noise right now, so they will stay where they are. BTW, the front desk guy at the vet's told me White Noise was his favorite book and I think nearly wet himself or started crying when he saw me with it. So....yay?
Oh, and the list is from LibraryThing where people list their books. These are the most commonly unread books listed. Some of that is not surprising (hey, Ulysses!), some of it is (seriously, you can't get through Catch-22 or Brave New World? They're like 20 pages each!)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Crime and Punishment
Wuthering Heights
Catch-22
The Silmarillion
Don Quixote
The Odyssey
The Brothers Karamazov
Ulysses
War and Peace
Madame Bovary
A Tale of Two Cities
Jane Eyre
The Name of the Rose
Moby Dick
Emma
The Iliad
Vanity Fair
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Blind Assassin
Pride and Prejudice
The Historian: A Novel
The Canterbury Tales
The Kite Runner
Great Expectations
Life of Pi
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Atlas Shrugged
Foucault’s Pendulum
Dracula
The Grapes of Wrath
Frankenstein
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Mrs. Dalloway
Sense and Sensibility
Middlemarch
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Sound and The Fury
Memoirs of a Geisha
Brave New World
Quicksilver
American Gods
Middlesex
The Poisonwood Bible
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dune
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Satanic Verses
Mansfield Park
Gulliver’s Travels
The Three Musketeers
The Inferno
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Fountainhead
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
To the Lighthouse
A Clockwork Orange
Robinson Crusoe
Persuasion
The Scarlet Letter
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Once and Future King
Anansi Boys
Atonement
The God of Small Things
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Cryptonomicon
Dubliners
Oryx and Crake
Angela’s Ashes
Beloved
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
In Cold Blood
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
A Confederacy of Dunces
Les Misérables
The Amber Spyglass
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Watership Down
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation
The Aeneid
A Farewell to Arms
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
Sons and Lovers
Possession
The Book Thief
The History of Tom Jones
The Road
Tender is the Night
The War of the Worlds
*This is from one of me favorite movies. Many, many cookies if you can guess it. The hint is that you have to pronounce it "booo-k."
Friday, May 30, 2008
Fun With MadLibs
Today I went to the BARBRI. It was sooo BARBRI. I saw my friend BARBRI as I was BARBRIing the BARBRIs at the BARBRI. I said, “Hey, BARBRI, what are you doing
The end.
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