California Love

As much as I ridicule California's direct democracy style of government or their nonsensical laws, there is much more I love about the state.

Of course there is the food. Besides the Mexican food and In-n-Out that Californian transplants crave, we miss the produce and the "freshness" of California cuisine. My mom brought home a bucket of tomatoes from her friend's garden. My dad bought two huge boxes of sweet mangoes from the Vietnamese grocery store. I was excited to go to the grocery store and see rows of produce. We have produce in DC, but not as much and it just looks sad, even at places like Whole Foods.

Even though I have made pizza before in DC, there was something about the pizza I made last night that felt "so California." Maybe it is because the golden state is the home of frou-frou pizzas. Just pepperoni, no thanks. This pizza had sundried tomatoes, caramelized onions, artichoke hearts, olives, chicken, and mozzarella on a whole wheat crust. Mmm.

Another part of California I love: summer evenings. We headed out to the Hollywood Bowl for my uncle's birthday and it was a beautiful night for Miles Davis Jazz night.


I love how the Hollywood Bowl looks when it is lit up at night. Reminds me of California sunsets.

Bar Reflections Part 3: PTSS & Back to Reality

It is still difficult for me to grasp that I finished the bar exam less than a week ago. That is me, after finishing three grueling days. A dork, but a happy dork.

The million dollar question that I have received a million times since finishing: how did it go? *shrug* I do not know. When you are dealing with such a long test with so many components, it is easy to only remember certain parts- usually the difficult or obscure parts. It was challenging but not as horrible as I imagined it could be. I felt pretty confident on the essays, so for me, I think it will come down to the multiple choice section. It is really difficult to tell when you can always narrow down the question to two choices.

The funny part about finishing the bar exam is that you feel like you have so much more knowledge you acquired over the summer that went untapped. On the one hand, I wished they had tested on the topics that I put so much time and effort into learning (community property, wills & trusts, California civil procedure), but on the other hand I was relieved to get familiar concepts.

All that knowledge floating in my head has manifested itself into numerous law and bar-related dreams. Fortunately no failing the dream nightmares (yet), but dreams in multiple choice and essay structure form. I am reading Pillars of the Earth and then had a dream that Prior Phillip and builder Tom entered into an oral contract to build the cathedral. Was it enforceable?

It is like I am suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome from my summer of studying. Everything I see reminds me of the test. That story on the news about kidney transplants immediately brings me back to the tort essay about car accidents impeding the delivery kidneys.

Hopefully a little more time and a little more fun will make me normal again. Or at the very least, maybe having a job that starts in a few weeks where I can apply the law will make me slightly more "normal" after hours. Finally, I decided to extensively blog about this to get everything out of my system. Some closure. So I promise that this will be my last post about the bar until I find out results in November.

Bar Reflections Part 2: Judgment Days

The Cast of Characters
If I could have documented the period of time before the doors opened while every was waiting outside the Ontario Convention Center, I would have. I believe there were around 1,500 people at my testing center, and 8,000 overall in California.

What an interesting group of people. From people who went to law school straight out of college to people in their 50s-60s. The older men love Hawaiian shirts; everyone loves their flip-flops. One man wore a suit with a Lakers jersey underneath while other people were in pajama pants. There were people chain smoking and others praying. Jewish men wearing yarmulkes, Muslim women wearing Burqas, and people wearing traditional African attire. So many Asian people. So much more diversity than any law-setting I saw in DC; my roommate and I felt like we were at the UN convention.

Yet, even though the dress and ethnic diversity was different, the law school characters were all present. My favorite was the group of "Mean Girls." There was the classic queen bee/Regina character we called "Legally Blonde," who had about 10 pounds of makeup caked on every morning. She and her posse, walking behind her of course, matched with little spaghetti strap tops with velor pants, would give each other little hugs each morning, talk about how long it took them to blow dry their hair out in the morning, and blow kisses to each other once they went to their separate seats. I am not joking. [And before you liken me to Selma Blair's character in Legally Blonde, I am sure at least a few of these ladies are intelligent, but I really do not care about what hair product you use when I am trying to listen to instructions]

And as much as I tried not to, I was sizing up people sitting around me, as everyone else was probably doing. When the guy sitting two seats from me uploaded the wrong testing software (not sure how that is even possible), brought in a bottle of water after numerous warnings that we were not allowed to have any beverages in the room, and came in late almost every day, I thought to myself: I have to be smarter than that guy.

The Test
So the test itself. It is actually funny that everyone knows what the bar exam is but few people know what the test actually consists of, even law students.

The California bar exam is 3 full days of testing consisting of 6 essays, 2 performance tests (which are writing memos, affidavits, or other analysis/drafting exercises), and 200 multiple choice questions. Each day is broken up 2 3-hour sessions with a lunch break in the middle and some fingerprinting thrown in on the side. So it essentially feels like taking 6 back-to-back final exams that are all closed book.

If you think this sounds intense, it is. Whereas most states are only two days, California's is three. This adds to its reputation as the hardest test in the nation. It really is a mental marathon. You have to keep going even if you get a tricky essay on the morning of day 1. You have to keep going even if the girl behind you is tearing up because her computer crashed, the girl in front of you is having a nervous breakdown because she pressed start 1/2 hour before go time, and the guys in front of you will not stop talking about yesterday's questions. You have to keep going even if your friends on the East Coast are done and you still have an entire day to go.

Those three days are the fastest and longest 18 hours of your life. The instructions could not feel any longer and the time to write the essays could not feel any shorter. It is such an out-of-body experience. At the end of each day, I asked myself "did I really just do that?"

I am still a little bit in shock, even a week later. But more on that tomorrow . . .

Bar Reflections Part 1: The Summer of Studying & Emotions

I am done. I am alive. I am happy. And after a few days, I am almost fully recovered from taking the California bar exam except some related dreams/nightmares (we will save that for part three).

Since this blog is like my own time capsule, I figured I would record my final thoughts about the bar exam, especially since I stopped blogging in the last month. Just need to get a few last things out of my system then I am moving on after that. If you are sick of/bored with bar-related things, come back in a few days. If you want bar exam tips, just let me know. I wrote 7 pages of advice for some friends who asked me for it. Otherwise, here we go.

Overall, the workload this summer was pretty similar to how people described it would be. Non-stop class and studying, especially for California test-takers who often had Saturday classes. By the last few weeks, I even cut out all my tv shows. It was up at 7am, gym for 45 minutes, and then studying until I went to bed at midnight. By the end, it was easier to move all my materials to my bed since I was referencing so many books. My roommate and I started eating dinner at our desks as not to "waste time." I can buckle down. I think I was prepared for that.

What I was not prepared for was the roller-coaster emotions. Previous bar-takers would try to explain how you would feel but you just do not "get it" until you go through it yourself. I never really had a major breakdown or hit the wall in terms of not being able to study anymore. However, there was the constant weight of failure looming over my head that was so oppressive. The weight of having to do this all over again. The weight that all this hard work would not pay-off.

The strangest and hardest part of this summer was the constant self-doubt that inflicted even the most confident of us. It was such a mind-trip. Some people may have thought my fear of failure was irrational, but I do not think it was completely unfounded. Even looking past all the statistics about California's bar passage rates, I personally knew many smart individuals who failed the California bar.

Some days I thought I had this test in the bag because I was rocking graded assignments; other days I flipped to a practice essay and wondered how there could be so much more to learn or why could I not understand something. Am I really seeing this for the first time a week before the test? I wanted to see the light at the end of the tunnel while simultaneously wanting more time. It was really difficult to accept that even if I had all the time in the world, I would not be able to learn everything. That is the most challenging part for the studious, well-prepared law student. The loss of control.

Additionally, there were honestly so many days where what no one said felt comforting. I know so many friends and I appreciated people giving us encouragement while we simultaneously thought "they do not really know what it is like." Sometimes the more people said that there was no way I could fail, the more afraid I was of becoming the girl who surprised everyone by failing. Then I would feel bad for not appreciating other people's encouragement. Similarly, I would have these moments where I would tell myself that the worst thing that would happen is having to take this test again. Then I would feel bad for stressing out. Conundrums.

This probably seems much worse and melodramatic than I meant it to come off. It was not the worst thing I have ever gone though, but it was the most challenging academic endeavor. And I am someone who likes school and studying, I could not even imagine what it felt like for someone else. I cannot count how many times I actually gave myself pep talks. I told myself that I was a lawyer (per instructions of Judge Bruce Lee), told myself that there would be ponies (per instructions of Professor Franceze), wrote a message telling myself to not freak out (per instructions of Professor Honisgberg), told myself that I have always managed to come through during test time, told myself that if I could get published I could write a stupid essay. I probably sounded like a crazy person.

In the end, I made it through relatively unscathed and felt like I prepared as much as I could. I also felt so lucky I had a really great support system that did help a lot. From a roommate who was going through the same thing (we called it the buddy system), to law school friends who sent each other encouraging gchats and emails, to non-law school friends who would do things with you and not make you feel bad for neglecting them, to the boyfriend with care packages and patience, to parents who sent stuff over and wished me luck while they were on vacation in China.

And that's what I did over my summer vacation. Next up: the test.