I think I drank the bar exam out of my system.

Literally. I'm not usually a 'drink until I pass out Britney Spears style' type girl.... but we went to a good friend's wedding on Saturday night. There was an open bar. Hubby and I both celebrated the wedding and the fact that the bar exam is over. We were driven home by his parents. Thanks in-laws! I don't really remember much of the ride home, but apparently I was very very drunk. I spent the next two days recovering from the worst hang-over of my life. Glad to say I survived it, since nothing would have sucked worse than to die of alcohol poisoning before results were released.

What's also interesting was that in the duration of that 2-day hangover, every time I fell asleep, I had really weird bar exam dreams- in one I had my ziploc bag but was lost in a residential neighborhood trying to find the convention center. There was a catholic school that I kept passing and the priest kept closing the gate, refusing to tell me where the test center was. Plus, suspicious looking people kept biking past me and menancingly looking at me as I realized I was openly clinging a very nice new looking laptop computer. And a ziploc full of earplugs.

In another dream, I kept reliving the Performance Test B as if it were that movie 'Groundhog's Day'. I would get through reading the file and library and outlining my answer, then get up to go to the bathroom, only to come back and realize that they had placed a brand new test in front of me, and I had done nothing yet.

But when I awoke this morning, my head felt fine, I was no longer nauseous and I realized I didn't have any scary bar exam dreams last night. I'm sure I'll have a few more, probably for the rest of my life.. but at least I feel that I've mostly excised the bar exam demons. I also think the mass quantities of alcohol I consumed on Saturday helped erase most of the useless information I memorized for the bar exam.

Now on to cleaning the house and 'things to do' list I've ignored for the past 2.5 months.

The Real World

Yup, it's really over. Yesterday and today when I woke up, my first thought was "Did I dream that? Is the bar really over?"

I still don't quite know what to do with myself. I went shopping yesterday, had lunch with my little sister, and then went out to dinner and for drinks with a bunch of my friends to celebrate. A couple of my really good friends gave me a gift card to a local day spa so I can enjoy a nice post-bar massage. What a treat! She also told me that she had a dream one of the nights I was in Sacramento that she was taking the bar exam and the proctors wouldn't believe her when she said I was supposed to be the one taking it. Ahh... sympathy dreams.

My husband is happy to have me back, and I'm being super nice to him. I will be eternally grateful to him for being so amazing throughout this whole process. In an odd way, I think it really strengthened our marriage.

On the agenda for today is starting to clean and make a list of all the things I want to get done before I start work on August 20th. In 8 days, I'll be on a cruise ship : ) Sometime between now and then I'll post my more collected, comprehensive thoughts about the whole process.

I just can't stop smiling.

Because the bar exam is OVER!!!!! And if the performance I gave over the last three days isn't passing, then quite frankly I don't know what is.

I felt like I did even better on the three essays today than Tuesday, and I felt pretty damn good about Tuesday's essays. After each essay, I get up for a bathroom break, but I always peak ahead so I can start thinking about what's coming. After question 5, I flipped ahead to question 6- "Husband and Wife...." I couldn't stop smiling all the way to the bathroom. The proctors must have thought I was crazy. I <3 community property. I am also crazy proud of myself because I spotted the agency issue on Essay 2 (I don't think it was a big deal to miss, I just talked about the liability of the agent when the principal is undisclosed and the liability of the principal for Ks entered into by agent in the mutuality of enforcement section of the specific performance analysis.) I'm surprised that they didn't hit us on civil procedure or professional responsibility. But even though a lot of the subjects they hit were unexpected, I couldn't have asked for a better test. I feel like it was fair- or at least as fair as the CA bar exam can be.

The PT was nothing crazy which made me overjoyed. I think I managed to interweave every fact I possibly could. Although I was thinking it would have been super cool if they'd managed to include the Anna Nicole Smith case in our library.

What an awesome feeling when the proctor called time. The convention center erupted in applause. We are done.

On the drive home, I started laughing uncontrollably. It's over and I feel damn good about it- not just that it's over, but that I think I actually passed it.

Now off to bed... I am freakin' exhausted.

The Finish Line

I'm ready to finish this thing with a bang. Of course, if the bar examiners are as evil as I suspsect, the light at the end of the tunnel I'm seeing is just a train... Either way, it's done in 9 hours or so. This will probably be my last post until I get home late tonight since I'm checking out of my hotel room before heading over to the testing center. Good luck everyone!! It's almost over!

Everyone should have to suffer equally.

I'm bored in my hotel room looking at other bar blogs and I find myself getting irrationally angry at people in states with 2 day exams who are already done. I want to be done. It's not fair. Why do we live in California again?

Day 2 made me sleepy.

The MBEs are done, and I'm back at the hotel almost an hour early. I finished both the morning and afternoon sessions in just a little over 2 hours each which is pretty on par for what I do in practice. I felt super confident about this morning's session. I think I lost some of my energy at lunchtime though because I was really dragging this afternoon. The questions seemed a bit more oddball this afternoon and I started tripping out because I had a very long sequence of 'D' responses that seemed odd. Oh well. Whenever I second guess myself, I'm usually wrong, so I left them alone. Overall, I'm still feeling pretty confident. I just know I have to get my energy back by 8:15a.m. tomorrow. I'm going to relax a bit, then figure out something for dinner and pack my car so I don't have to worry about it in the morning. Can you believe it- this is almost over!!

When in doubt, pick A.

On the way back from my run this morning, there was a news truck looking ready for a live feed from the covention center. Eh? Are they doing a story on the stressed out test-takers that have taken over downtown, causing a drop in tourism and a rise in crime?

Better get ready... it was definitely much harder to wake up today. This is exhausting. But it's time to go rock the MBE. Just remember.... when in doubt, pick A- because if we all do, they might think it's the wrong answer and they just screwed up.

And Dear God- please be gentle with the mortgage questions.