Category: William Mitchell

I was pretending to be responsible (which is a hard job, believe me…). I got into bed at a semi-decent hour so I could sleep for six hours. The problem? I didn’t sleep for six hours.

I’m blaming it on the caffeine. I had a Mountain Dew with my dinner and opted to drink another at some point that evening, which must have been a little too close to bedtime. Whatever the reason, I woke up multiple times before finally getting out of bed when the alarm went off. (At least I remembered I was still in Minnesota this time around…) I went down to The Liffey for breakfast again, had some orange juice and maybe half a glass of water with my food, then headed back over to RiverCentre for a day of 200 multiple choice questions.

Things started a little slow, but I got in the zone and I was in no hurry working against the clock—I ended up getting out of the room about twenty minutes before the session ended. I went to get my lunch of out of the bag check, then went across the street to enjoy the weather while I finished up the other half of my Subway sub (which wasn’t wet and soggy after almost two days in the fridge! Yay!).

That’s when I hit the wall. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but when I get really warm and really dehydrated, I get really tired. Given that most of the liquid I’d consumed up to that point was one quart of water I brought from home, two glasses of juice, a couple cans of pop and little sips of water here and there… I can’t imagine why I’d feel dried up. Why not more water while I was there? It’s because we’ve got a well at home and the city water tastes extremely nasty in comparison.

I was tempted to take a nap outside, but I didn’t think anyone would wake me up and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t do it on my own. I eventually got back inside, sat down to wait for the doors to open up again and immediately started doing ye olde tired head bob. When I finally plopped down in my chair, we had fifteen minutes left before the clock started again and that was all I needed to conk out.

The same went for taking the exam—I was falling asleep for part of the time. If we’d been using pens instead of pencils, I wouldn’t have been able to erase all the little lines drawn in random areas on the page from those moments when I was nodding off… Still, I finished the final 100 questions of the day with about fifteen minutes to go, left the building and didn’t feel nearly as thrilled as I did the last time I escaped from the clutches of the legal nightmare known as the bar exam. I guess I was a little grumpy after waking up in the middle of the afternoon like that…

Don’t jump on my back—I set my alarm last night so I’d get six hours of sleep. Since then… you’ll have to wait ’til tomorrow for me to write about “Day 2, Take 2.” In the meantime, I hear a nice, cozy bed downstairs calling my name. (Maybe that’s why I didn’t sleep well last night—I’m used to hearing voices coming out of the mattress…)

I’m not trying to make this a habit, but I got four hours of sleep before the exam again this year. Why? Because I’m stupid. Or because I was reading all the e-mails that people have been sending me. Or that I’d hoped they’d send me. Or maybe it was the male equivalent of menstrual cramps.

Regardless, in the wee hours of this morning, I climbed into bed and read a book for about twenty minutes. I found that during law school, if I tried falling asleep right after studying, I’d be tossing and turning all night (which was oftentimes four hours back then as well). So I brought a book with me, distracted myself enough to sleep well and woke up with a jolt when the radio alarm went off.

Perhaps the worst part of getting up this morning was… well, I knew I had to get ready pretty quickly and I was heading out to take the bar exam, but as I kept listening to the radio, I heard the names of the DJs and thought they sounded rather familiar. Then after another song, they mentioned 94, 694 and 494—three interstates freeways that surround the Twin Cities. “Why would they be playing this radio show all the way here from Minnesota?”

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Because the last four times I’ve stayed in a hotel was out in L.A. (the film festival, final interviews for B&G, the night after leaving the mansion and the aftermath show—you can find out more about all of them in various posts in the blog). For some reason, even though I knew I was taking the Minnesota state bar exam, I thought I was out in California. Very strange…

So I got up, gathered my things, made sure I had my laptop packed up and headed down to The Liffey to grab some breakfast. I’m claiming that I think better on a full stomach, but back in school, having a full stomach and being in class around 3:00 in the afternoon would put me to sleep, so it’s debatable. I ate an omelet, walked over to RiverCentre and got myself registered to head in and start typing my fingers off.

I have to say, using my laptop was a lot different than I’d expected. It was kinda nice to be able to cut and paste, correct mistakes without leaving big blacks streaks on the page to cross out the crap you didn’t want in there… it was also nice when I hadn’t the slightest idea what to write, but I’ll get to that later.

Upon getting into the computer room to get everything set up, I discovered a bunch of little orange flags on all the tables. Apparently, if we needed help from a proctor, we were supposed to raise our hands; if we needed help from one of the computer proctors, we were supposed to hold up our flags (Vive la Bar Exam!). Thankfully, I didn’t need to do either, so I got to keep the blood down in my fingertips for the most part.

Then things got started. The exam started with the MTE, initials that signify something I don’t remember. Basically, we were supposed to write a memo to a client using a bunch of materials provided for us in the MTE packet. “Here’s the stuff the opposing party is talking about; this is the case that refutes it and will make sure we win the case.” Sadly, much like last time, I didn’t finish.

That was the most disappointing part of this morning’s portion of the exam. I was all set to work fast, get things laid out and have plenty of leeway to double-check stuff, get in a quick nap, what have you. Considering I finished most of it last year and I type a lot faster than I write by hand, you’d think that’d be the case here, right? Apparently, I’m an “Assistant Boy Scout Master of the Keyboard” as well, given how much I didn’t get written. At least I had everything laid out right—I just didn’t have enough time to explain the points I’d made.

Still, that was an hour and a half that got finished up faster than I’d expected. (Yaaay!) Then came another two essays that took up another hour and a half (Boooo!) But it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. In fact, I’d say I sounded somewhat like I knew what I was doing. (I couldn’t remember how to defeat the “no warranty, express or implied” clause, but I know there was a way to do it… crap.)

Once I finished working on those—they were pretty much done aside from that warranty thing—it was lunchtime. I sat down, ate half that sub I bought yesterday and was washing it down with a can of Mountain Dew. Since we still had some time left before the exam restarted, I went outside and walked up and down the block. It was nice and sunny outside and it felt good to be outside the building where all hell broke loose today and won’t let up until tomorrow afternoon.

Then it was time to get going again. This time, we had four essays and three hours to write them (as opposed to the MTE for half that time and two essays for the other half). I opened up the booklet, read through the scenarios and thought, “Oh, shit.” Unlike this morning, there were no issues and explanations for said issues that popped into my head. Translation: it was bullshitting time! I made up a whole bunch of rules, which probably didn’t work in my favor, given that two of them dealt specifically with numbers—income taxes and dividing property between a couple getting divorced. (Fingers crossed…)

The urge to just pack up and leave after an hour was definitely there, but I knew I needed to write more to have any chance of passing, so I tried getting the issues organized and elaborating on some of them as well as possible. Did it work? It’ll be a few months before I find out. Oh, and for those who read about last year, you’ll note that I was pissed about having an Ethics/Professional Responsibility question since they’re part of the exam maybe once every two years. Guess what was part of the exam again this year? Grrrrr…

Still, I finished up as much as I could think up and handed in the whole lot except for the little question booklets. The bar exam people are nice enough to let us keep them so we can go home, look up all the rules and see just how miserably we did on the essays. What a nice gesture. Personally, I won’t be using them for review—I’ll be using them for tinder the next time I start a fire. Light those puppies on fire, use them to get some bigger sticks burning and end up with a big bonfire. I think my new motto should run along those lines: “If you’ve got the bar exam, make smores.” Kinda catchy, don’t you think?

I wasn’t really in the mood to eat by myself—I didn’t have friends to eat lunch with like the last time around, so aside from saying “Hi” to a couple people, the last interaction I’d had with a person was Katie. I was going into person withdrawal. Not good. I figured I’d give Justin a call, see if he had plans for dinner or if we could get together. As a matter of fact, he did have plans. And he told me about them yesterday. Crap.

So then it was time for another flashback to last year: I headed back down 7th St. looking for someplace to eat. I didn’t want to grab anything at a pub—two meals in a four-meal span is enough for me, thanks—so I kept walking and walking and walking until I saw a sign for a café. I thought, “Okay, I’m hungry, it’s not a pub, I’ll stop there.” And then it turned out to be The Day by Day Café, the place where I ate last year. As tempting as cauliflower soup sounded, I didn’t want that much of a flashback, so I kept walking until I reached one of those old train cars-turned-restaurant called “Villa Roma Pizzeria.” I wasn’t really in the mood for Italian food, but I was tired of walking around, so I went inside. And I accidentally ordered my dinner to go.

So I got to carry a calzone back to the hotel with me, but I think it was worth it—damn, that thing was good. Flaky crust, melted cheese… maybe a little too much pizza sauce, but still… damn. I’m glad I stopped there for dinner. After eating my dinner, I went downstairs and spent some time jumping between the hot tub and the swimming pool, but I didn’t stay down there for too long: there were no chicks around. But the primary reason was because I felt like I was going to fall asleep in the hot tub and that didn’t seem like a very good idea. With all the money that’s been spilled into my legal education, it’d be kind of a waste to croak halfway through the bar exam—we wouldn’t even find out if I could have become a lawyer this time around.

I headed back upstairs after swimming, pretended to shave, then jumped in the shower for a while. Now I get to spend the remainder of the evening hanging around in just an open long-sleeve shirt and shorts, not caring about what’s happening outside the four walls of this room (unless there’s a fire, in which case I might seriously consider how much it would hurt to jump through a fourth-story window to save myself). Most importantly, I might squeeze a little studying in tonight, but I’m definitely going to get more than four hours of sleep tonight. I’m aiming for five.

I’m currently sitting in my room in the Holiday Inn RiverCentre dreading tomorrow. For those of you wondering why I got a hotel room, it’s because I have a hard time sneaking hookers into my parents’ house. Seriously, it’s because it’s a 20-mile drive to the testing site, I’d have to cross the Minnesota River and there’s no guarantees when it comes to traffic and/or parking around here. Registration starts at 7:30, lasts for an hour and directions begin at 8:40. They ain’t gonna delay the start of the bar exam for nobody (unless someone falls out of a plane and crashes through the ceiling of the building, but that hasn’t happened for, like, eight or nine years, so it’s not something I can count on).

Conversely, it’s much easier to rent a room that’s two blocks away and leave my car parked in the lot here. It’s more expensive, of course, but the convenience is worth it as far as I’m concerned. Plus I have high-speed Internet access here, so I can babble on for lengths and not have to wait quite as long for it to get posted on the blog. (It might only save 10 seconds, but it’s less time, dammit!)

The only down side is that I’m bored out of my mind. Being here in the hotel room means I’m stuck watching TV, reading a book, babbling on for lengths or (God forbid) going over some notes at the last minute. At least I’m not overtired at the moment, so I’m sounding mostly coherent. For the time being.

Thankfully, I haven’t been completely isolated from human life for the past five hours or so. I ran over to Subway when I first got here—it was pouring, but I brought my rain jacket for a reason. I figured, “Buy a foot-long sub, eat half for lunch on Tuesday and the other for lunch on Wednesday.” I walked up to the door and saw that it closed at 5:00pm. Why? Hell if I know. Maybe it’s because they only have enough workers to fill one shift per day, so it’s open for eight hours max. Regardless, I got there, flipped open my phone to check the time: 4:55. Whew.

I bought my sub, went back to the room and waited for a phone call. I made dinner plans with a friend—there’s a bar called The Liffey attached to the hotel, so we were meeting over there as soon as she got off work and drove over. She’d called me while I was driving into town to say she’d be getting out later than she expected. No worries, I thought. Then while I was sitting in my hotel room, it started raining harder. A lot harder. She called shortly thereafter to tell me that while traffic was moving, the speedometer on her car was on zero. Her final phone call was while she was back on the road, asking if I wanted to postpone until after the bar exam was over. I said I could have dinner on my own… she decided to come anyway.

Technically, I guess that wasn’t her final call—the last one was to let me know she was waiting for me in the lobby. We went over to The Liffey, where I ate a BLT that was pretty good, though the fries left something to be desired. Katie had a mixed greens salad that was significantly larger than she expected. Plus it gave her onion breath. Ah well… at least we had fun together. In my hotel room! And we could have slept together, too!

Wipe that smirk off your faces—nothing happened. We were talking in the bar, which was getting louder the longer we stayed, so I suggested we head upstairs where we could hear each other. We got in the room, I sat down in the chair by the desk and she plopped down on the bed. After lying there for a moment, she said she could have fallen asleep right there. (Had she done so, I could have laid down next to her and taken a nap; we would have slept together.)

We talked for an hour or so, at which point she had to take off and study for a class she’s taking (Biopsychology). After she left, I was sooooo glad she stopped by to distract me from the nasty stuff that’s looming in my immediate future. Now that she’s gone… this is all I’ve got to distract me and I’m pretty much done writing. I’ve received lots of good luck and best wishes via phone and e-mail during the course of the day, so I’ll try to put it to use tomorrow.