How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

You know that scene in Mean Girls when Lindsay Lohan imagines that she lunges across the cafeteria and attacks Queen Bee? Or that scene in Election when Reese Witherspoon hears tribal war cry music when she see Chris Klein? Yeah, that's the feeling that some of us have in my bar review class have against some irritating classmates.

They exude the type of behavior that you would probably find annoying after being with the same people for a few months in law school. But since BarBri classes are with the same exact people four hours a day, five to six days a week, it gets to you a lot faster.

In particular, we have a "that guy" in our class. Loud, obnoxious, tells bad jokes, and thinks he's funny. He turns around in class every five minutes, stares, looks for people he knows, and winks at them. Same routine, everyday. The worst is that when you are looking straight at the lecturer on the screen, he seems to think you are looking at him. No, you are the one turned around! Stop winking!

My roommate and I joke that one of us is going to snap one day, climb over three rows of desks, and attack him Mean Girls style. And then we would make it onto "Above the Law," the legal gossip site for being "The Girl Who Couldn't Take It Anymore." Provocation, we would argue! A reasonable person would have snapped too!

If you ever find yourself in a bar review class, or another stressful environment, here is behavior I have witnessed that you should avoid unless you want to become that person:

• Make fortune tellers, you know those things you made when you were in elementary school, and play it while some people are trying to pay attention.
  
• Tear the perforated pages out of your workbook for two hours straight. You could not wait until you got home? Everyone can hear you, even if you try to do it only when the lecturer is speaking and not pausing.
  
• Retype all the text from your workbook onto your laptop typing really, really loudly. I was honestly concerned that this guys' keys were going to pop off, he was hitting them so hard. I pray that I do not have to sit by him during the actual bar exam.
  
• Sit by the aisle, put your bags in the narrow aisle ways, take the longest to leave at the end of class, and create fire hazards. It is like the people who sit at the front of the cabin who take forever to get their luggage out of the overhead compartment.
  
• Bring smelly snacks. Tuna fish? Not good for a classroom with no ventilation.
  
• Yell and flip-off cars multiple times outside the law school building whose tires are just a little over the crosswalk. Dude, we are all stressed, but do not take it out on random bystanders and make all law students look crazy.
  

(And just in case you are concerned, I am okay, not too stressed out, and do not plan on attacking people in class. I just had to catalog this since Alex wants me to write a book about law school characters.)