weekend: survived

i am in a giddy giggling mood -- but the kind of giggling that is humorless, empty, and perhaps even on the verge of hysterical. it is from being pooped and feeling so strung out, i think.

i haven't had a weekend this bad since that one time i went to a bachelorette party, got completely drunk off my ass, got down and dirty with the male stripper, got naked with the other girls as we danced together in a mad-happy drunken orgy (to this day, i still don't know how my bra came off of me . . . ), ended up hugging the toilet for the remainder of the night, then feebly tried to drive home 40 miles through a snow blizzard in my little little car with the manual transmission still pissed drunk.

no, no, the party was not the bad part of the weekend -- recovering the next 36 hours was. ;)

ha! wow. just remembering that fantastic party has lifted my mood tremendously.

anyhow, these past three days were absolute hell. i feebly tried to pick up an outline when i got home but instead found myself nodding off. and so i napped -- but am still a bit muggy-minded.

we did a practice run of the entire three days of the bar exam, finishing day 3 today, and even though i was half-hearted through it all (instead of concentrating on the essays, for example, i spent most of the exam time trying to connect my laptop to the internet -- mostly to no avail), i'm glad i forced myself to just go and do it. first day of essays sucked, the second day of mbes was so-so, and today, the third day, was actually better.

i say the mbes were just so-so because although i got a raw score of 138, i had already seen a good chunk of those questions before in prior practice questions i'd done for homework before. so i was mostly all, "wtf?" for the entire 4 hours i did the multiple choice questions. like, i kinda feel cheated. here i am, having done most of my mbe homework for the past couple of months, only to have our 3-day simulation be a repeat of the very same questions i'd done before?

i've been cheated, i tell you! for the past couple of weeks, i have been thinking that this bar review class is a rip-off, and this only confirms it. i want my money back!!

and no, that's no joke or typo above; i only spent 4 hours on my mbes yesterday, not the full 6. and that's normal; it takes me 2 hours to do 100 questions.

it freaks people out. they think i skip questions, that i'm not reading, that i'm giving up, or that i'm a whiz.

it's none of the above, actually. i'm just a fast reader.

i've tried to slow down when doing the practice mbes on my own. and i thought i was taking it easy and slow when i did the simulated exam yesterday. but then, after every fifty questions i did, i'd look at the clock, expecting a full hour to have gone by ('cause trust me, it sure feels like it), only to see that maybe 30-35 minutes have lapsed.

but at this point, i cannot change too much about what i do. i will still be conscientious and try to be careful in answering each question. but if my pace is comfortable, and it is, then i'll stick with doing them as i'm used to doing them.

plus, it's kinda fun to psych people out when they think you're a whiz -- even if nothing could be further than the truth.

i just like fucking with people's minds. :)

today's essays were MUCH better. i did a better job of outlining my answers, and the MPT question was actually more simple than friday's: two tasks to deal with (draft persuasive facts and arguments for appellate brief to the almighty "columbia court of appeals") instead of four.

but overall, i'm still massively weak. i really need to bone up on certain topics. i still need to memorize my intro paragraphs that are necessary to certain topics, like with community property or con law issues, and there are lots of sub-areas within subjects that are weaker than others -- covenants, cy pres doctrine, and other weird little random shit like that. like, i know what they are! but it's just a different story for me when i try to write out my analysis. . . .

that's why the main goal for me is to do more practice essays this week. it's just like driving: you can read the driver's manual all you want, but if you really want to learn how to drive, you have to put the pedal to the metal. and this is the part i'm always just so lazy about. it's hard to be motivated when it comes to doing these things.

but if the fact that there's only ONE WEEK LEFT doesn't scare me enough into doing it, then i've got no business trying to do this thing.

ugh. time to go find the bed. if anything, i can be glad of one thing: i survived this practice run. and now i need to make sure i'm ready for the real one.