The Moment of Truth

so... after all that jazz, I PASSED...
and i feel great about it, i'm super excited to actually start my life as an attorney
except that i feel a little bit guilty
as evidenced by this blog, among other things,
I didn't put in an extraordinary amount of effort to study
there are plenty of people who did study really really hard, for months, and still failed

The pass rate for the July 2008 California bar exam was 61.8%.
The discussion board I post on regarding the exam, has a lot of good advice, including, you CANNOT pass if you do not put in the required effort.

That's obviously a lie.
Maybe the people who say that are paid by BarBri and other companies that sell review courses to scare people into spending millions of dollars preparing for the bar exam. The Barbri course alone costs appoximately $3000 depending on which state you are in, if you need the ipod version b/c you can't do live classes, add another $1000. And most schools and companies encourage you to take PMBR or some other course that helps you prepare for the MBE and the MPT. Those courses are never cheaper than about $1000.

Here's what i spent...

$550 (approximately, for Barbri complete set of books from 2007 off Ebay) ****
$25 at Kinko's to print and turn my outlines into a book
$10 on random highlighters, post it's, and other stupid shit that I used mostly to convince myself that i was studying when in reality i was coloring
--------- for a total of $585-----------------

unless you want to include all the money i spent at Kohl's, Old Navy, etc, when i went shopping to distract myself from studying.... maybe if i would have taken the live barbri course, I wouldn't have had the free time to go shopping:-)

**** After the bar exam, I sold this entire lot of books on ebay, for about $525, so i only lost about $25.
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I think i'm going to start updating about my job search, I forgot how much I enjoy typing random shit for me and stacey to read and laugh at.... and maybe a few other people.

There's a tea stain on my moral character

Oh, I forgot to mention this but I started studying for the bar exam again. At some point I realized that I have to take the bar regardless b/c i can't get a refund, so I better at least make an effort to study a little.

I'm approximately 2 weeks behind at this point. So if i do 2 days worth of work everyday, I will be caught up by July 01. That's my goal - I can't go into the Fourth of July holiday behind schedule. The only problem is that I only get about 4 hours of studying done a day. At this rate, I'm not catching up at all, I'm just getting more and more behind. I'm taking suggestions for how to get caught up... or what things to skim or skip over. But i'm not leaving Robbie. The things I'm completely inflexible about are: 10am visits with Robbie, and 8:30pm to 11pm visiting time. The rest of the day can be worked around, I think.
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In other news, Robbie has had pneumonia pretty bad, which doesn't help his breathing at all. On Thursday we had a strange visitor, a chaplain from the Christian Motorcyclists of America. He talked to my mom for a bit, and then went in to see Robbie with her and said a prayer. That was really nice of the CMA, I guess they just go around looking for motorcycle wreck victims... Weird job.
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On Wednesday, I had some crappy luck. I broke my flip flop (not a fit flop, although i'd like to have some of those, if anyone's feeling like making donations to the Rachael get skinny club) while I was at the library. It wouldn't stay on my foot at all as I shuffled across MU's god awful large scary campus toward the vehicle. I'm pretty sure at least 12 people stared at me like I was homeless. I probably look homeless anyway, I haven't showered since who knows when, and I haven't done my hair for about 2 weeks! I look like a zombie! As i was walking out of the library with my broken shoe, I noticed a trail of something coming from my backpack. I had hidden an iced tea from McD's in my bad to get out of the library (since you're not supposed to have those kinds of cups in the library at all) and I guess it got smashed. Erica and I had to stop outside and empty out my big student backpack and clean everything. Thank God that my expensive BARBRI books didn't really get wet, but one of my notebooks was virtually ruined and the letter I have from the California Bar that says I have good moral character now has a giant tea stain on it. Great....

Bar Exam Studying Begins: Week One

So... Bar exam studying started off a little rocky. It's really hard to get up in the morning, really hard to leave my house, and extremely hard not to find other things to do that are more important than studying on any given day.

The first subject in Constitutional Law. I really hate ConLaw. It's probably the combination of 1.) having a crappy teacher, 2.) not covering all of the subjects in class, and 3.) not paying any attention in class. Torts is next, I hope it's better. All i know is that it can't get any worse than this.

At this point, I'm not regretting my decision not to spend $4000 on Barbri. That fact may change as we go on.

Next week, I'm planning on being a lot more serious about getting out of the house and going to rec center in the morning.