Survived first week of Barbri

really, the hardest part about it is 1) sitting in some pretty uncomfortable chairs for 3.5 hours a day and 2) making myself stay awake from about the 2-3 hour.

First day was an intro and supposedly "essay help." The essay help consisted of some woman who has an unfortunately high-pitched voice read, verbatim, from the calendar/schedule thingamabob we got that day on how to modify IRAC for the bar. Oh, and a tip that yu throw the kithen sink at each essay. For example, if the call of the question is to address whether Plaintiff can get damages, you first start by addressing whether there was a formation of the K. And of course, do all of that in 30 minutes per essay. Oh and in my state--with no scratch paper (morons). I found the "lecture" to be completely uninteresting and nearly worthless since hey, I can read. I found that "lecture" all the more worthless as I was writing my first practice essays where I learned that 1) throwing the kitchen sink at something doesn't work well in 30 minutes when you are trying to cover equitable division of property, alimony, child support, and child custody. 30 minutes is barely sufficient to cover those topics alone. And 2) while I realize that for Barbri to format the model answers might just be too much to ask for my $2000, and I acknowledge that the essay books even say that they just outline the answer and it's not necessarily complete, it's excessively frustrating to know that you CAN'T know if you covered everything you needed to for full points by the graders. Sigh.

This week we studied family law and real property. I didn't take family law in law school, have no interest in ever practicing it, and frankly, take special glee in being able to say to all and sundry who ask: "ooh, you know, I'm not a lawyer, so I can't answer your question about 'fill in the family law topic here' and I never took family law. Sorry, guess you'll have to go hire a lawyer for that." In learning the tidbits on family law, my conclusions were that it's a pretty jacked up, subjective area of law--and that my particular state, as always, is about 100 years behind the times on some of it.

Real Property wasn't really all that difficult. For the first time since I took the bloody class, I was happy (okay, maybe that's too much?? relieved?) that I took real estate finance because I already knew all the stuff about deeds, mortgages, conveyance, etc. And I was happy that I had been a Property TA my second year. I'm sure after I take my practice test in it this afternoon, I'll be singing a different tune, but it just didn't seem like there was anything I heard in the lecture or read in the outline that left me thinking: "Oh yeah! I forgot about that." or "Wow, really? I didn't know that."

I am unexcited about the amount of work on the schedule for the three day weekend, and even more unexcited about the fact that I make up for Monday being a holiday by going to class next Saturday. Ick.

Oh, and a random thing: our property professor noted several places where he said that PMBR materials will tell you the opposite of what he said and that they are wrong. Is that so? Prof Proprty gave me the impression that PMBR stuff is largely out of date. That makes me kind of nervous to use their questions for the MBE. ANyone?

Lastly, and randomly--I just discovered ink on one of my hands. I don't mind stuff on my hands when I did it or at least remember when it occurred. But trust me, when you're a mom, and you don't know if you got it at school or since you've been home... you look at your little kid and think "crap."