I did not want to run yesterday morning. At 6:30, the humidity was already 91%. (I know this because Henry never met a gadget he didn’t love, so of course there is some high-tech digital barometer thing sitting in the kitchen.) But after an early morning thunderstorm ended, I ducked out and headed down South Street to cut through a little path in the woods behind Clearwater over towards Division Avenue in Summit. It was about a 40-minute loop (an aside: running in the heat and humidity and hills of Summit is great training!), and 20 minutes into it lightning cracked right over my head and the skies opened up. Whether I turned around or kept going, I still had 20 minutes to go, so nothing left to do but pick up the pace a bit.

It was the best run I’ve had in weeks. Months. I remembered running down the far end of Prospect Street with Ankie, senior year, in a similar storm. There is an exhilaration in just surrendering to the rain. As I ran up and down hills yesterday, brushing the rain out of my eyes (and waving knowingly at other joggers caught out in the storm), I felt so grateful that I could be out running on two healthy legs, that I had a beautiful baby waiting at home for me, that I have the most supportive family one could ask for.

Later, through the wonders of Facebook, which I could go on and on about but it would be cliched by this point, I went off to meet some high school friends for a drink in town. I hadn’t seen Carolee, Karen, Meme, or Darci since our fifth reunion high school, and of course I don’t remember talking to them then (nor much of the reunion in the first place, for various reasons…). Going to our tenth reunion was out of the question for me at that point in my life, and apparently no one got around to organizing a 15th. While they have all settled nearby and have remained close to each other, I nevertheless felt like I had just seen them a month ago. I love how maturity, chidlren, and a mellowing kindness can take hold in one’s 30s — five years ago I would have been to insecure and self-aware to have met up with high school friends. Last night we closed out (in Summit, that would be 11 p.m.!) the bar and had a wonderful time. We didn’t talk about the bar exam, nor what firm I worked for — we gossiped and talked about our kids. I definitely needed the break — needed to get out of my mom’s house, away from the forest-green glare of those BarBri books, needed that glass of wine (sauv blanc on the rocks, a nod to LMR!). But I think the evening also was so enjoyable just because — as cheesy as this will sound — people, at their core, are open and kind.

And this was, again, illustrated to me this morning. Sitting at the kitchen table on another hot, humid, rainy day, I was procrastinating over my third cup of coffee. I just didn’t see how I could hit the books again for 10 hours. (At this point, I wish the exam were tomorrow…) The UPS guy appeared at the back door, and my mom got up to get her package — but, instead, it was for me! An old, old friend, Natalie — whom I haven’t laid eyes on in at least 15 years, but who herself has taken three bar exams (NY/NJ and then, as so many people do, another bar exam for love when she moved to Atlanta for her husband…) — sent me some homemade sugar cookies from Eleni’s in NYC. It was as if she knew exactly where I’d be mentally on this exact morning — not knowing how I could do it for yet another day. I finished my coffee with one of the cookies and now feel like, with so much support and encouragement, even from the most unexpected places, there’s no way I won’t fly through this test.

Thank you thunderclouds and old friends.

(An aside: yet another reason why I need an iPhone — how I’d love to post a picture of our gathering. Everyone looks the same — and yet, as I think happens with women in their 30s, much better than even 15 years ago! Especially since between all of us we had 10 children…)

And with that, Marbury v. Madison Ave. will take a brief haitus to acquire a law license in the state of Massachusetts. Little Bug and I are hopping on the Acela to Jerz tomorrow morning (that should be an adventure!) for two weeks of studying at my mother’s (who, I’ve mentioned several times, herself took the bar with three children. Though now that I think back on it, two of us were away at summer camp and the third — me — was apparently more than happy to stay far away from the house and out of my mother’s hair because I honestly don’t even remember her taking the bar! Which only shows you how self-absorbed a 15-year-old girl can be…)

I’m actually looking forward to diving in fully, knowing that my mom will be handling all of life’s mundane distractions (cooking, etc.) and taking very good care of my baby during the long days — and knowing that I’ll surface having done the best I can do.

See you on the other side!

Here’s why I did not go to law school: to make friends. I have enough friends. I’m not being cheeky.  I am fortunate to have made wonderful friends over the stages of my life — childhood and high school, summer camp, college, journalism school, in Idaho and Los Angeles, and here in Boston.  As you move out of your 20s and debaucherous mini-reunions become less and less of an option, to properly keep in touch with friends — especially as they begin to disperse back to hometowns, across the country, or across the world — is a struggle. I wish I had more time for these incredible people who have criss-crossed my life — be they all the way in China or just across the Charles River as it were — I certainly wasn’t looking to fill any sort of gaps of friendship in my lilfe.

My decision to go to law school, as I’ve written about before, was almost solely for my own professional and financial self-improvement, and one of the reasons I chose to go to law school in Boston — as opposed to New York or Los Angeles, which also were options — was because I had such a great support system of sisters and friends here already. I knew just one person when I set foot on campus in the fall of 2005 — my sister’s roommate, Meg, who already was a good friend — and I didn’t think that anyone would really want to be friends with the older, more experienced (ahem) student, who had lived a lot more life than probably 99% of the beer-and-softball playing crowd that BC Law is known to attract.  (To be fair, I also sort of knew Andrew, since my other sister pointed him out in the “facebook” and said, “I went to college with him. He’s great. You should be his friend.”) But in general, I wanted to stay in a familiar city, with familiar people. What would my classmates and I possibly have in common? I lived in a tiny studio in Cambridge, and I assumed they’d all be sharing large flats in Allston and Brighton, having study groups (not my thing) and keg parties (not my thing anymore).

So I wasn’t looking to make more friends, but law school is a strange world, especially your first year.  First, you are thrown all the way back to high school with a rigorous, set schedule: you take the same exact classes with the same exact people at the same exact times every day. (BC also drives this home with the very high school-eque — public high school, at any rate! — corridors of lockers.) You get to know everyone in your 80-person section well — you see them in the library, grab a quick lunch with them in the cafeteria, silently urge them on when they get cold-called on a footnote in Torts or groan when you-know-who raises his/her hand again. And then, of course, you need to unwind, and if everyone else is going for $1 drafts in Cleveland Circle after the last class on Friday (at 3:30 p.m.!) what else are you going to do? It’s a camaraderie that exists probably only in one’s college freshman dorm — the whole experience is so new and somewhat terrifying that you cling to this group to which you’ve been randomly assigned for dear life. 

And from that larger group a few people start to emerge as lifelong friends. I know that there are several dozen people whom I will be happy to see for years to come at alumni events, tailgates, and walking the sidewalks of the Financial District in their lawyer suits.  But there are a few more whose children’s baptisms, husband’s 30th birthday parties, weddings, baby showers, and housewarmings I’ll attend for the rest of my life.  A small group who will get together for random lunches and brunches, whom I can email to complain or to celebrate.  Without whom I couldn’t have made it through law school — people who kept me laughing during the trials of 1L year, academically afloat while sick and pregnant 2L year, and sane and happy as I did 3L year with the Little Bug.  With the exception of a few who are fleeing or have fled to more interesting places out West or to NYC (or even Connecticut! Yikes!), most will be staying in Boston, working in buildings I can see from my 34th floor office. 

And most of my friends, I should note, are much, much younger than I am.  Which means I have another round of bridal showers and weddings and baby showers — and bar nights! — but also that, in the end, age wasn’t and isn’t the divisive factor I thought it would be going back to school.  Moreover, as an older student, I also formed relationships with professors that I know I’ll sustain — something that, naively, I was too intimidated to do in college.  Not only am I much wiser about the benefits of making and keeping contacts in one’s professional world, but I could relate to professors as a professional in my own right, as a parent, and as a friend (professors it turns out — gasp! — are people too!).  In general, these younger and older friendships are due in part to the intensity of the law school experience and, particularly, the cohesive nature of 1L year and my relative independence when I started.  But I also got really, really lucky in stumbling upon a school where my friends are the types of people I strive to be when I’m at my best.

I just did a bit of Google searching for the following:

“Did terribly/badly/horribly on practice MBE”
“Is PMBR worth it?”
“How to use PMBR CDs”
“PMBR flashcards”
“BarBri schedules for after the practice MBE”
“Feel like am going to fail bar exam”

I didn’t find all that much from this year.  So I write this post to help others sitting at their laptops right now in a state of mild panic, searching the same phrases.

I did terribly, TERRIBLY on the practice MBE. Am hesitant to write my score, but suffice it to say well below the “average” 105 for the practice.  By all empirical measures, I “got” law school. I liked law school. I got good grades. Made Law Review. Blahblahblah.  I know how to study for a law school final and/or write a law school paper, but the day-to-day outlining, flash-card making, and practice test-taking is something I just haven’t been able to keep up with.

So now, apparently, I have to start from the beginning.

I got a nice pep talk from a friend who is studying for the bar with her husband. They take turns making flashcards every night, outline for two hours, fill in their outlines and flash cards with the correct answers from the practice problems, and also seem to find time to go to the gym and be generally all-around pleasant people.  She said they study for about six hours on top of the BarBri classes and offered some good suggestions.  All of which, now that I have full-time day care, are doable (in theory).  More important, though, I need to stop criticizing myself for all that I haven’t done up until now, as well as to stop comparing myself to those who are more disciplined than I (and who don’t have a baby).

So, again, to those reading this in a similarly perilous position vis-a-vis the bar exam, I offer you this post as evidence that there is someone else out there in the ether — someone who by all accounts should be able to master this thing — who seemingly has not done so yet. We have three-and-a-half weeks left, during which I’ll be going to the “optional” BarBri MBE explanation (have heard from others that if you bombed the practice MBE it can be quite useful), will be using these ready-made flashcards (suggested by the aforementioned kind and studious friend — it’s too late to start making my own), going to the three-day PMBR (my firm pays for it, luckily), and trying not to be horrible to my family.

Those who know me don’t take my panic too seriously. My mother (who, I should note, took the NJ bar with three children) says, “I know this is hard for you. All you can do is just do the best you can do.” Hmmm. My husband dismisses me (kindly, but he does it nonetheless) as one of those perfectionist people who cry wolf after every exam, “Oh, I failed it” and then get an A.  I am actually not one of those people — I generally tend to know when I ace a test and when I bomb one from the moment I put down my pen. I knew Thursday’s practice MBE was a disaster from the lunch break, just as I knew when I took the MPRE in March that I had comfortably passed. I know when I turn in an A paper, an A- paper, or a B+ exam. So my fear is not unfounded. However, I will admit that I am one who perhaps needs the angst and adrenaline of the last-minute push to really focus. Some people are the “work a little bit every night” types; I have always wanted to be one of them, but am not (and then, of course, get anxious when I’m around them because I secretly want to be them?) I think I was at one point — high school maybe? — but certainly by the time I got to journalism school the addiction and rush of the deadline completely subsumed any lingering consistency and diligence.

I’m not looking for sympathy anymore.  I cried in frustration and defeat for a few hours this morning after self-grading the test and am over it (I think).  So, anyway, take heart. If you’re in dire straits at the moment, you’re in good company.  

I was inspired by this post.  And this post.  And I was uninspired by: my last trip to the gas station; sitting in a freezing cold basement classroom and/or the library at BC Law for another day when I have, in fact, graduated; and the Mass Pike.  Now I breeze down Marlborough Street, across the Public Garden (though on my way home today I noticed the signs on the gates to the Garden saying “No Bicycling.” Oops…), and then up through the Common, parking my bike at Suffolk Law precisely 10 minutes after I set off from my house.  I haven’t been caught in a rainstorm yet, nor has it been too hot, so, after a week of hopefully reducing my carbon footprint, so far, so good.  I’m currently borrowing my friend Erin’s bike (which had been lying dormant in her living room for about a year, she assures me), but could get inspired enough to get my own so that I can bike to work in the fall, which will be a much quicker commute than either walking or the T.  But for now, maybe I’m doing my own small part for the environment and the family budget (albeit, sadly, small small small on both accounts).

(As an aside, Suffolk Law School is gorgeous.  By far the nicest law school I have ever been in, in a perfect location to boot.)

I am downloading PMBR (a multi-state bar exam prep company that takes a stab at competing with the BarBri monopoly) CDs into my iTunes.  Why am I spending 45 minutes doing this?  Because I am actually going to listen to them on my iPod?  Perhaps replacing runs to “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit’ It” with the rousing “Offer and Acceptance,” or “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” with the equally as inspiring “Search and Seizure”?  If this ends up being the case, please stage an immediate bar-review intervention:  it should not get to the point where I am replacing Beyonce with “Hearsay.”  No, I think it’s just plain procrastination.  If I’m downloading CDs, at least I’m doing something bar-related as I surf the web, right?

A somewhat related aside: there are 432 unread posts on my RSS feed.  Meaning only that clearly I used to spend far, far too much time on the Internet.

Also: sometimes I look at my blog stats to see what search terms people used to find my blog.  If you mention a celebrity (e.g., Chris Martin), you’ll automatically get a lot of hits.  (Pax Arcana gets a lot of traffic when he writes about zombies.)  But sometimes people find this blog by just searching phrases such as “law school when you’re old” or “what to wear after a baby” — things I’ve written about before.  Today someone found me by typing in “alcoholism while studying for the bar.”  Hmmm. 

A friend from law school has a nifty little blog called Three L.  I’m not sure what she’s going to call it now that we’ve graduated and she’s taking the legendarily horrible California bar and moving across the country.  S.D. Law?  Sounds a bit too familiar, no?  Anyway, I like her blog because the frequency with which she writes in it lends itself to sweet, funny little observations that don’t try too hard to be too much and, as such, are comforting and entertaining.  For example, she and her boyfriend have discovered that a monthly bus pass is only $59 — far, far less than a tank of gas.  So now they are in a competition to see who can go without using his or her car the longest.  She has a 10-minutecommute to “BarBri school,” while he has a 45-minute one, so I have a feeling I know how this is going to turn out.  Anyway, she has inspired me to write more often, even if I don’t feel like I have something worthwhile to say (which has always, always been a big issue for me when it comes to writing: what if what I write is no good? Until I can lose this attachment to literary perfection, which, of course, I’ll never achieve, that best seller will never get written!) Merci Miss Three L — bon chanceover there at HLS this summer. 

Where would you rather spend the next seven weeks? I thought so…

…is what all the bar exam-review people tell you, over and over. That being said, it’s a marathon being run on a 95 degree day and you are so slow that all the water stations have run out of water. And unlike, say, the Maui or the Sonoma Wine Country marathon, it’s in some place you’d never really want to visit, such as Camden.

I’m at least five days behind the Barbri “paced program.”  I haven’t even received my PMBR books in the mail, even though the chipper rep told me that I should be doing 50 of their multiple choice questions a night ON TOP of the Barbri work.  What?  Who has time to do that?  I guess you do if you get up, study, come home, study, and never exercise or eat or talk to anyone.  Or maybe even sleep.  Or are just really, really efficient.  I have done just a couple multiple choice and essay questions, and it takes me far, far too long to outline my class notes from that day.  This is, admittedly, because I am so type-A.  Is everything properly bolded, underlined, italicized, and highlighted where necessary? Even though IT DOESN’T MATTER because, unlike law school, you can’t take the outlines into the exam with you, I don’t feel like I can move through the outlining process without understanding every step. This is not the Barbri way, but I can’t let go…and I’m slipping behind.  That and also the fact that I spend a good deal of time that others are spending studying with the Little Bug.  Which is only proper and of course I want to (especially because she is growing and learning and developing by leaps and bounds every day.  I mean, my child can say, “woof woof woof” when she sees a dog!  Who would have thought?), but it makes me anxious.  And somewhat resentful — not of her, obviously, but of myself and for some strange reason, others who have more time to study than I do.  I got through law school with a baby, surely I can get through the bar?  At least I’m not the poor woman trying to pump milk in the bathroom for her two-month-old in full view of everyone during the 10 minute break, right? (I asked her if there was anything I could do to help, and she snapped at me, and probably rightly so — I guess I wouldn’t want someone talking to me were I in the middle of pumping in a public place…)  And so I go into avoidance mode: I don’t want to talk to anyone for fear that I might learn from them how much more they are doing than I am — even though, in the end, it’s obviously not a competition, and it’s highly likely that I will, in fact, pass.

Here’s my promise to myself and to you, my dozen(s?) of faithful readers: I will make an effort to post every (OK, at least every other) day about something non-bar review related.  If you are only reading this blog, this might keep you coming back despite my sore lack of posts the past few weeks.  If you know me, it might make you want to still be my friend after all this is over…

One of my professors, Kent Greenfield, wrote a response to Attorney General Mukasey’s BC Law graduation speech.  See it here on the Huffington Post blog.  Greenfield does a good job of summarizing the defensive tone of the speech and articulating why there was so much concern and controversy about Mukasey’s role as speaker — all born out in the speech Mukasey ultimately did give and the message it sent to graduates about what the law is and should be.

Today was the first BarBri review session (like a two-month Princeton Review course for the bar exam — almost everyone takes it, so it’s kind of a monopoly.  And it costs almost $3,000, so if you don’t work for a firm who is paying for it, it’s actually a problematic monopoly…).  My bar review experience did not get off to an auspicious start when yesterday, running across Copley Square with a stroller (yes, I brought the stroller to carry everything in — there are a lot of books! And they are intimidating and heavy!) full of books to beat the thunderstorm and massive downpour home, my MANDATORY i.d. card — the one they say DO NOT LOSE THIS, WE WILL NOT LET YOU IN TO CLASS — somehow flew out of my bag.  Granted, that little alley between Copley and the Hancock building has been deemed the windiest spot in Boston, but still – it was in my possession for all of five minutes.  So after class today, I couldn’t even have followed everyone to the library if I had wanted to to begin summarizing my criminal law notes.  Instead, I had to go back to BarBri and get an affadavit, which then had to be notarized (by a nice guy at Bank of America across the street…).  Yikes.  I guess they are afraid you’ll get a duplicate i.d. to give to someone who hasn’t paid the $3,000 for the course?

Anyway, the BarBri course consists of six weeks of four-hour lectures that you watch on a tiny TV screen at the front of the biggest classroom at BC Law — the one where I had all my first-year classes.  It felt very, very strange to be walking into school with all my classmates, just days after graduating, laden with heavy books, laptops, coffee mugs, and a packed lunch, preparing to spend entire days frantically typing out information and then heading to the library.  Nine-to-five, five days a week — total 1L redux.  The difference is, the BarBri class actually teaches you the law — and because of that, it wasn’t all that bad.  Today we learned criminal law.  Yes, all of it.  In 3.5 hours.  Which is all I will take with me into the bar exam because I never took it in law school.   Which is also kind of frightening, but kind of not, because had I taken it in law school, I would have read a bunch of confusing cases and spent the entire semester wondering what was really important and what the rules really were without ever quite being sure.  In just 3.5 hours, I learned the actual black-letter law — now all I have to do is memorize it. 

For those who care, the bar exam is two days — the first day is the multi-state test, which everyone in the country takes.  It is all multiple choice, and there are only six subjects tested, roughly:  Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Contracts, Evidence, Torts, and Property.  You take four of those 1L year — Con Law, Contracts, Torts, and Property — so you have a pretty good grounding in them (most law schools also have Crim Law as part of the 1L curriculum, and BC changed theirs to include Crim the year after we were 1Ls, of course…)  I never actually took Evidence or Crim Law on top of these (oops), but most people do.  The second day is the Massachusetts portion of the exam, consisting of six essays, and there are like 13 possible topics, so that’s a bit dicier.  Some topics they test almost every year (Criminal Procedure); some only once in awhile (Secured Transactions, and I know they tested that last year, so hopefully it won’t be on this year’s exam, which would be good since it is one of the hardest classes at BC Law.  I didn’t take it…)  Unfortunately, Tax is not one of the topics on either day of testing.

Anyway, it is sort of overwhelming, but only in the quantity of material.  The actual material is not that difficult — it’s just a matter of gearing up to memorize massive quantities of factors and exceptions.  Which I’m just about to do, having now secured another i.d. (the next one will cost me $250 if I lose this one!), downloaded every possible BarBri handout, and cleaned the kitchen in one last bout of procrastination.  Criminal Law, here I come!

Update:  For the first time ever, I understand that muder and manslaughter are subcategories of the larger classification of homicide.  Woh.  See?  Perhaps we really don’t need law school afterall — just a six-week bar-prep course to really understand the law.