6.30 pm

Found a great typo in my property notes today:

ANALYSIS OF RAP PROBLEMS
1. Determine which future interest has been created by the conveyance
2. Identify conditions precedent to the vesting of the future interest
3. Find a measuring life
4. As if we will know, with certainty, within 21 years of the death of the measuring life

Which really seemed to sum up real property in a nutshell: as if we could ever know anything about the subject with certainty.

I've found it best to budget a whole day on the weekend for the "cumulative review". Trying to memorize this much material makes my head hurt. Going through the subjects that are related to each other one after another seems to help, as does taking my time. The goal: to get each set of notes down to 5 or 6 pages, which I then print out and attempt to completely memorize. Right now I've got Agency/Partnership, Torts, and Con Law down to size. I'm feeling hopeful that Crim, Corporations, and maybe Contracts will cooperate for next week. It's all a matter of not deleting things from my notes until I'm absolutely sure I can remember them either spontaneously or with only a brief prompter.

7.00 pm
The church bells are ringing 7. Not exactly sure how that happened. Still have 2 and a half subjects to go through. One of which is still in "full" form, meaning that this is the first weekend since the lecture and it hasn't been at all summarized yet. Not that I copy the handouts verbatim, but...

If I can get everything done by the time it gets dark, we're going up to Chabot to look through the telescopes tonight.

8:35 pm
Crash and burn. I think I finally hit a BarBri wall. Which is a little bit funny, since the "intro" to this morning's lecture was a ten minute discourse on how instead of pushing ourselves too hard to get all the practice essays and MPTs done (because there will be plenty of time to do those in the two weeks we don't have lectures), we should be sleeping with the essay and MPT books on our nightstands so we can read them before bedtime.

WTF?! Mixed messages, much?

At any rate, I put in 12 hours yesterday and 12 hours the day before and was at 10 today when my brain stopped functioning. I stared at Essay # R-32 and couldn't for the life of me figure out what the questions were asking.

So I shut the book and decided I was done for the day, ignoring the voice in the back of my head that said I should go ahead and keep working, just so I would know what it was like to freeze up on the bar exam.

It is June 22. Over a month to go. Plenty of time to practice freezing up and freaking out. For today, I'm done.

4.31 pm
Week 5 of BarBri, and I started out behind. Only an hour or so, but it wasn't the way I wanted to go into the week. The problem was that I didn't do as much as I should have Saturday, because I had reached the point where repeatedly banging my head into a brick wall was sounding preferable (and more productive) than studying any more. That left Sunday to catch up, which would have worked had we not gone out to dinner with A's mom and then left my purse at his sister's house and had to go back for it. C'est la vie. I finished up at 10.00 last night with everything but one MPT outline done.

4.43 pm
I am blogging as I type up my notes, which I really shouldn't be doing, but this outline is driving me crazy and I need something as a form of distraction. Most of the lecturers have been alright so far - some have even been really good. Today's just didn't work for me. I'm sure she organized her lecture handout, but it's not a form of organization that makes any sense to me.

Small dog is curled up on the floor asleep. He didn't get his walk this morning, so he's spent most of the day bounding around, running back and forth and up and down the stairs. He's several feet away, which is nice. Usually when he lays down on the floor near me, he's either under my desk at my feet or right behind my chair. It's sweet, but it makes it difficult to move without running over him.

6.02 pm
Small dog has moved closer to my feet. Done with outlining my notes for today. My reward? A short walk with small dog, and then another 4.5 hours or so of work. A is making roasted bell pepper stuffed with lentils, curried cauliflower and sausage, ginger, and lemon-grass for dinner. Small pleasures.

In the Peloton

12.43
Could it be that studying for the bar exam is actually making me less neurotic? As strange as that sounds, I'm thinking it might be the case.

Let me explain. I'm definitely what you would call a "Type-A" personality. A card-holding member of the "if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself" school of thought. And while I don't consider myself an overachiever per se (I stuck with 2 extracurriculars in law school per year, thank you!), I firmly believe that if something is worth doing, it's worth doing perfectly the first time around.

This is the kind of mentality that sets you up for disaster when studying for the bar. Because let's face it, unless you've got a photographic memory or are willing to go without sleep for three months straight, there's no way you can learn everything that's going to be tested. After all, if they made it easy, there wouldn't be any bell curve.

This is where the less-neurotic part comes in.

For the first three weeks of class, I was banging my head against the wall, frustrated that I was missing issues or rules or tiny little points that hadn't even been in the CMR or the lecture. Going over the answer for the first essay we turned in for grading was definitely a low point. Although I was pretty sure I'd get a third of a point or two for IRAC'ing, that was about all I thought I'd get.

This week - I've been letting things go a little bit more. Instead of trying to grade my essay outlines, I've been focusing on reading the fact pattern, sitting back and looking for the big picture, and then concentrating on making sure I hit the issues in the answer.

But most importantly, I've adopted a peloton mentality. You can't ride in front the entire race, not even if you're Lance Armstrong. The middle of the pack is a pretty good place to be.

3.04 pm
Somehow I have reached 3 in the afternoon with only an hour left of work. It's a nice feeling, especially since I got a late start today. The dog wanted walking, and ignoring his whining for two and a half hours while I listened to my lecture seemed rather cruel. So we went up and down the hills, and then up again, enough to tire him out enough that he's spent the rest of the morning alternating between napping and weaving around my feet like a kitty cat. We might take him to the farmer's market this afternoon, too. I'm pretty sure they don't allow dogs near the food, but I think they're ok on the periphery.

3.10 pm
I've adopted a new approach to BarBri.

I've started listening to the lectures in the morning. Before, I was doing them in the afternoon or at night, and generally was too exhausted and brain dead when I finished to tackle the "after class" assignments. This was great the first day of the week, but then I would end up feeling like I was behind a day all week - until the weekend, where I would spend all weekend working to catch up. Leaving myself a) exhausted and b) frustrated and continuously feeling "behind". Since the lectures are up by 8 am Pacific, I've been doing them first thing in the morning (after breakfast and a quick read of the newspaper). It's only Tuesday, but it seems to be working.

I've also started going over my outlines - just a quick refresher - before doing practice essays or MPQs. I know, I know, you can't use the outline on the test. But - if reading it before I do the essay gets me that much closer to getting the rules in my head, I figure I'm in a better place. It doesn't do me any good to look at the book thinking, "I know that rule" (or even worse, "I don't even know what they're asking"). Because reading the rule in the model answer is helpful, but typing it myself is even better.

4.50 pm
Sunday afternoon on a gorgeous summer weekend, and I've spent almost all of it inside studying. Which, at this point anyway, is beginning to seem like a futile endeavor. I wouldn't mind my entire summer being consumed by Conviser and NYT and really bad puns if I felt like I was making any progress. But the fact is, three weeks into Bar Bri, I feel stupider than ever. I've gone from being able to spot the issues on essay questions with reasonable proficiency to not even having a clue what's being tested. I've been told to use common sense when answering the MBE questions if I come across an unfamiliar point of law - but my common sense seems to have no relation to the bar examiner's common sense.

The frustrating part, is I've never had this much trouble studying before. Once I figured out that the key to law school exams was to do a bunch of practice problems, I did fine. Sure, I made outlines, but I rarely used them during exams - the process of doing practice essays was what made me memorize the law. Here? I feel like I'm running a marathon. Through the woods. Off trail. blindfolded. No matter how much I study, no matter how many obscure points of law I think I'm memorizing - there's another five that I don't know.

On the upside, at least I'm not trying to take care of last minute wedding details, too!

8.45 am
We lost a fish in the earthquake Saturday night. When I got up Sunday and fed them, Picasso wasn't looking too good. All huddled in on himself, not moving, not eating. He looked all beat up - fins ragged, great big spots on his scales like someone had been beating him up. It looked like every blood vessel in his tail had exploded. By the time A came home he was in bad shape, so he took the fish out of the water and sent him off to the great fishtank in the sky. It was kind of sad.

We think the rocks shifted around during the quake, and Picasso was just in the wrong place. Could be he got beat up by the other fish - but he was hurt so badly that I don't think the other guys did it. For all that they're mean, nasty fish, they play pretty nice with each other.

8.53 am
In happier news, I'm trying once again to get an herb garden growing this summer. Last year we had the herbs inside, and it was so darn hot they just up and wilted. Year before that we were house sitting in Berkeley and put the planter outside, where a friendly squirrel came and dug up all the seeds.

This year I've got oregano (I think - I either planted oregano or watercress, but I'm pretty sure it was the oregano), basil, rosemary, sage, coriander, and tomatoes. The last one isn't exactly an herb, but home grown tomatoes are definitely a goodness.

Here's the seeds when they first started popping their heads up.  This was about five or six days after I planted them.












It helps to put them in plastic, especially since it's still a little chilly.

This morning, I realized that as soon as the seed casings fell off, I wouldn't have a clue what was what until they'd grown a bit more.  Which is alright for the most part, aside from the fact that planting tomatoes in a small pot with the basil would be a bad idea and that sort of thing.