A Girl Walks Into a Bar... and Says, "Ouch!"

Graduation is over, vacation is done, and now it’s time to put my nose to the grindstone for that Last Big Test. The State Bar finally issued my certification, my transcripts are ordered and my fees have been paid. Now all I have to do is pass the fucking thing, because God knows I do not want to go through this rigmarole again. And that is proving to be no small task.

Most of my classmates are doing the BarBri bar review program, which involves watching videotaped lectures and filling in the blanks of pre-printed outlines as you follow along with the videos. I did the one-day BarBri course when I took the MPRE last year, and spent the entire time searching the room for a sharp instrument with which to end my misery. I can’t even imagine what the whole bar review course is like. Thanks, I think I’d rather have a six-week-long root canal.

Being the maverick I am, I decided earlier in the spring to do MicroMash, a sort of do-it-yourself bar review, for a variety of reasons, the primary one being my aforementioned aversion to hours and hours of menial blank-filling each day. It’s also significantly cheaper than BarBri, and lets me study from the comfort of my local Starbucks. I also don’t have to listen to the some of the assholes I went to school with -- and I am certain they remained assholes after graduation -- talk about just how many MBE questions they did the night before and how they have already mastered Commercial Paper, when I don’t even know what the hell a Commercial Paper is (I really thought it was referring to the New York Times, but that is apparently not the case).

It was a little disquieting, however, to have a box of books just dumped on my doorstep (motivation not included) with no one to hold my hand or tell me what to do. To its credit, the program is fairly well-guided, with software to work on the MBE portion and weekly state-specific law assignments that I am supposed to read, as well as an essay question that I complete each week and e-mail to a lawyer mentor, who will then redline it and return it with a multitude of confidence-instilling comments about my bright future as the most well-educated barista at the aforementioned Starbucks.

If law school didn’t serve as a sufficient reminder of just how much you don’t know, then bar review does a phenomenal job of displaying your incompetence about the law, despite having suffered through three full years of Socratially-inflicted misery. Things I thought I learned during law school I find myself having to re-learn again and again. I have been reduced to making flashcards, which Anonymous Boyfriend patiently quizzes me on, then offers helpful hints after observing my vacant look, then eventually reads me the answer after I get it 23% correct.

It’s basically like study week during finals. Except it never ends. And there are things you’ve never learned before that you have a week to figure out. And you don’t even know if they are going to be on the test, but you just pray they won’t be and that it paid off to risk only half-assedly learning the minutiae of limited liability partnerships and adoption procedures in order to be able to eat once in a while.

Wish me luck, y’all. I’m gonna need it.