Beginning

And so it all begins.

It finally hit me yesterday that this whole thing is a lot closer than it feels. I realized it was 10 days, and sort of had a minor freak out along the lines of, "oh sh*t, there's only 10 days left!" Because 10 days is not a lot of time! But the panic stopped as soon as it started, mostly because I yelled at myself that I just didn't have the time to freak out right now. I'd be better off just forcing myself to get something done rather than panicking. Especially since I tend to dwell on things.

Besides, you can get a lot done in 10 days. 10 days ago, I had only finished going through and outlining about 7 subjects. Since then, I've done 11 more and quite a few are over half finished. I haven't done very many essays or MBEs though, but I figure I'll do more in the upcoming week. And the upcoming span of days has no classes (finally), unlike the past 10 days which were occupied by either Barbri or PMBR for good portions of the day. So, while I may not finish everything as perfectly or completely as I would like, I have to believe that I have the ability to do a lot more than I have done so far. Because if I don't believe it... it won't happen.

PMBR is finally done. I just finished printing up my notes from the workshop (what I prefer to call it), so it's really complete. I thought it was helpful - there were some rules that I just didn't know, there were some tips that were good, and there were some clarifications that helped. While it was a little annoying the way he kept going on and on about how the "key to passing is the multistate!", I do think it was a good idea to go and I'm glad I did. After all, the MBE is worth the same amount as the essays, and I need it to count for 2 states, so it's pretty significant for me.

But I'm not really going to miss the PMBR locale. I took Barbri at Northwestern, which is a short 10 minute walk along the lake (gorgeous walk - I should have taken pictures!). PMBR was at Kent, west of the Loop. During the week, it's not hard to get there - there's a rush hour bus that is quick, takes uncongested roads, and gets there in about 10 minutes. But on the weekends, the (more local) bus doesn't even start running until 9, which is when the course started. So, if I didn't want to waste time for about an hour trying to take multiple buses to get there, I could do what I did yesterday (take a cab) or today (get a ride). Just inconvenient though. Because it's all about my convenience (ha).

Kent's not a bad facility though. The bathrooms are better than Northwestern, in the sense that they're newer and unlike one of the bathrooms at NW, the door locks don't unlatch whenever someone slams the door shut on a neighboring stall. But the auditorium was driving me crazy. The rows of seats are all connected, so when someone down the row is shifting in their seat or has a twitching leg, you all feel it. Which is so distracting.

And then today, I was reminded of just how important it is to have earplugs during the exam. While today was just a lecture, the guy next to me was writing so loudly. What took me 5 lines to write took him one page and the amount of force he was using to write... it was just so loud and kind of distracting. If I end up next to someone like that during the bar, I'm really going to need earplugs and a yoga-like concentration. Must not forget my "Xtreme" blue earplugs!

I'm kind of looking forward to having all this "free" time coming up now that Barbri and PMBR are finally over. Other than the gym and a brief errand or two, I don't have to leave my apartment between now and Saturday (when I fly to NY) if I don't want to or am busy doing stuff. But unfortunately, I do have a ton of errands that are trying to stop me from devoting all my time to the bar (calling Dell for maintenance, booking bar trip, calling for medical records, writing graduation thank you cards, and straightening things out with the parking office - I am NOT driving down there to drop off the pass - waste of time! - if anything, I will mail it to them). I really hate having to do these things in the middle of something important, but they have to get done. I wish I had a personal assistant, so I could just get studying done!

And now I need to stop procrastinating. I am determined to finish this Torts outline tonight before it's time to take a shower. Off I go. :)