yep, i think it's crazy, bob

So I’ve been saying I’ve hit the wall every day for the last three days, but today, I think I actually hit the wall.

I finished doing my mini-outlines (full of lovely jargon for super astro points), I’ve done several sets of MBE questions (but not the evil full-day MBE practice test, boo), looked at some essays, and I am, frankly, just tapped. I don’t really know what else I can do. I haven’t exhausted the materials, unfortunately, but I don’t know how to summon up the energy to even just read through some of the sample essays. I just feel done. Not ready, but done. It got so bad today that, after finishing my last mini-outline, instead of staying in the zone and doing some sample essays right then and there, I had to get up and go clean. Given that I was in the library, you’d think that would be a hard task—but you’d be wrong. Because I had three issues worth of books checked out to the journal to return, so I did that. And my locker was full of stuff that needed to be thrown away, donated, or brought home. So I took care of that. And there were things to be returned to fellow students (who have not graduated). So I returned those things to their mailboxes.

And in the process of doing all of that, I basically cleaned out my law school life. I have no reason to go back to the law school now (except that I have some books to return to a professor, who wasn’t there today, because, duh, it’s Saturday). I don’t have a locker anymore, I don’t have any books checked out to me or to me-by-proxy. Which means that the only thing standing between me and (gulp) real life is the bar exam. (And a week-long vacation, of course.) I am not a student anymore.

I’m really pretty sure that doing all of that stuff right now, today, two days before the bar exam, was not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. Because I’ve essentially replaced one reason to be anxious with another. Ack.

travel repercussions

So, yeah, I was out of town yesterday. I hoped to spend my traveling time consolidating my Bar/Bri notes and maybe making some flashcards. But my flight out was delayed by two hours (two hours!), turning my two-and-a-half-hour stretch of downtime at my destination into . . . no downtime; I literally went from plane to train to taxi to appointment. And on the way back, it was the same in reverse order—appointment to taxi to train to plane. Oof. ((And of course, I was so stressed out while the delay was unfolding that I could not get any work done, though I started out well—I was typing away up until we got on the plane for the first time. After we had to get off the plane, though, I was not much up for studying, as I was completely freaked out about making it to my destination on time. Yeah, it was one of those delays . . . really vile, in fact, made worse by the fact that we were pulling away from the gate when someone’s mistake caused some mechanical damage, forcing us to pull back in, completely deplane, and wait for a new plane—a plane which was supposed to be someone else’s connection, so I feel bad that those people got delayed as well.))

All of this means I was VERY unproductive yesterday (I did get a bit done on the plane, but not as much as I hoped since I forgot to bring the set of notes I was in the middle of consolidating, leaving me to go over Con Law, which, frankly, was not the best use of my time). Today, I’m back to the grind, though having missed yesterday’s (apparently not very useful) Secured Transactions lecture, I’m feeling maybe a bit less overwhelmed than those who DID attend and were freaked out by it. I started to read the Mini Review outline and it was so awful that I decided to put it away and try the long outline before I attend the make-up lecture. (Ah, Sunday Bar/Bri. Joy.)

Right now, I’m busy making the Contracts flashcards I hoped to make yesterday; I really can only do so many before my hand turns into a claw and I have to stop to take a sip of wine, check my RSS feeds, refresh Facebook, or, you know, post something.

me = tired

It amazes me that we live in an age where one can fly across the country and home—and manage to get something done in between—in a period of less than 12 hours.

TGIF, for seriousness

Today has been a good day.

Mind you, it didn’t start out that way—I discovered what I thought was a major snafu this morning (OK, it was a snafu, though it wasn’t as severe as I thought it was). It got me really down and I was, to be honest, really, really unhappy. But then it got fixed, and fixed quickly, and then things rapidly took an upward turn after that.

I’m not going to say more than that, since I can’t really without doing in a fair amount of the last remaining shreds of anonymity that I still have, but suffice it to say that I’m in a pretty good mood.

a case of the mondays?

As if it weren’t hard enough to get back into reading for Bar/Bri after a four-day break, the power? services? something? in our building went off earlier tonight. Basically, all of the building-central services—cable, the water pump, and general building electricity (elevators, hallway lights, but not unit electricity) just stopped, all of a sudden. I looked out our window and saw two fire trucks right outside the front door of the building and got a little squiffy.

Neither Mr. Angst nor I was content to just switch the TV over to the PS3 and play Rock Band (at least not right away), so Mr. Angst hiked down several flights of stairs to find out what was going on. No one knew what was going on, so he hiked back up the stairs. I cooked dinner, he played on the drums, and we were patient. (Oh, and when I called Comcast to see if we had an outage—I called before we realized the problem was more widespread—I was informed me that our area had had an outage “for several hours” despite my telling the customer service agent several times that we had been WATCHING cable TV only 15 minutes before I called. Sigh.)

Eventually, everything came back on, so we’re watching House and I’m trying to come up with more excuses to NOT read Con Law. (How about, I took it; I took various Con Law-related classes; I have read more Con Law articles over the last year than anyone really should have to . . . . Vote for your favorite excuse in the comments!)

In other news, I made my first in-court appearances today, all by myself (yes, this is allowable under the rule allowing me to practice without a license as a “senior law student or law graduate”). I think both of them went well. One went exactly as it was supposed to and was, if possible, even easier than I thought it would be. The other was . . . not quite smooth sailing, though the result was pretty much what we wanted. Anyway, I got up, held my own, and walked out with good results for my clients. I guess that’s what being a lawyer is all about, so, all in all, it was a good day.

i hate wasting time

I just spent several hours building clerkship applications in Oscar and printing my cover letters and resumes for non-Oscar judges, only to discover that my resume stated I graduated from college last month. Oops.

Problem is fixed now (reprinting resumes as I type), but what a waste of time!

adjustment

Forget the four day break from Bar/Bri; I need a weekend. Getting my body used to getting up for work every day has been . . . unpleasant. Mostly because I still haven’t gotten my body used to going to bed at a decent hour. And there’s no real reason for me to stay up; I just end up on the couch watching Law & Order repeats or laying in bed reading a book I’m not sure I’m enjoying.

So I’m off to work this morning, and then some administrative errands this afternoon (yay! no Bar/Bri! time to run errands!), but I think I might be taking a nap this afternoon. And definitely sleeping in tomorrow.