Sometimes you eat the bar...

and sometimes, well, he eats you.

The Stranger
--The Big Lebowski

That quote isn't entirely accurate since Sam Elliott apparently is saying bear, but you can forgive me if I seemed to have misheard him. I seem to think of little else than the bar and whether or not he is going to eat me. But I am trying to just keep working, and I think it is helping. If I still have time to blog, the reader says, then you must not be too worried. Well, I counter that this is merely procrasti-blogging because I don't want to do the essays and questions that I must. But I didn't really want to talk about the bar, so I'll try to steer the discussion somewhere else.


Kat and I have been packing up the house so some interesting things have been found. This was in some old photos. While it is only five years old, in some ways it feels like a long time ago. Looking at this photo makes me a little sad but mostly happy, although some people may have an inverse reaction. But I'm happy that that day happened. I was happy then and I am happy now, although a whole lot has changed.

I think studying for the bar exam makes me contemplative because being contemplative is less work and stress than studying. But I am feeling good. This summer is probably going to be the worst one of my life - at least I hope it is - but when it is over, it will be over. Unless it is not, a possibility which is scarier than Joan Rivers' face.

I have not been blogging because I have not been doing anything of interest other than listening to lectures, making notecards, and surfing the Internet when I was supposed to be studying. I hope everyone else is having a good summer.

One nice thing about the Arizona summer bar exam is that it is too hot to go outside anyway so it is relatively easy to stay inside and study. But it is also easy to stay inside and listen to podcasts, daydream, or just organize a sock drawer. I have done all of these things and more than once.

But looking at this photo reminds me that it is just a test that I am taking. It is just another thing. It is nothing more. It can't change the people in that photo, all of whom I love dearly, and it can't change me, regardless of what happens.

And with that, I return to the depths of the law.

Sunday Night is Blogging Night in America

I've been told that keeping a journal during law school is a good idea. I haven't been doing it - but then again, I haven't been following much of the advice I've been given. To follow more than half of it is impossible because most of it is contradictory. However, I was hoping that every Sunday night I could blog about law school. Maybe I won't be quite as open as I would be if no one could read it, but since the readership of this blog isn't exactly in the hundreds, I'll probably be fine.

So far my routine every Sunday night has been to
1. shave for the only time I will all week
2. burn my entire library of law school-related documents (assignments, notes, powerpoints, etc.) to a CD to prepare for either my laptop freezing, being broken or being stolen and
3. worry obsessively about the coming week.
I have no plans to change this procedure, although I threw in a step 2.5 tonight with a haircut, thanks to Kat's fine work with a pair of scissors.

I have my usual fear, but I have fallen into a bit of a routine when it comes to school. In part, this causes me apprehension (the imminence of which is an element for the civil tort of assault!) because I don't want it to get so comfortable that I forget that I'm not actually learning everything I should. But on the other hand (as we're always taught to consider in law school), it doesn't help the learning process to be on edge every single day.
But I don't think the anxiety will probably ever go away for me. In each class there is only one graded assignment - the exam at the end. So you can never know how you are doing until you really find out how you did. But it is the same situation for everybody, so there is really no reason to complain. I think everything will be fine, but confidence isn't my strong suit.

However, I'll close with two good things in an attempt to lighten the mood.
1. I was chosen as one of two Student Bar Association representatives for my section of the class. This was a good thing.
2. I found some law students with whom to play basketball every Friday. This is also a good thing.

In closing, I don't think this post was helpful to anyone probably. If you think I should do the law school kvetching in a private notebook and save the blog for talking about Ed Hochuli's prodigious guns or other sports minutiae feel free to let me know. Or if you like the pallor that this post has thrown over the entire enterprise feel free to let me know that, too.
OK, I hope to see you in a week.