Bar Exam Studying

When people hear that I graduated from law school, they generally assume I'm working as a lawyer now.

When I tell them I won't start work until the fall, they generally assume I'm enjoying some luxurious summer-long break. Which would be great. But that's not how it works, unfortunately. 

I'm studying for the Bar exam, which isn't until July 30th, but the Texas version is such a large, three-day monster of a test (the second day of which happens to fall on our third anniversary, so yay for marital bliss and Bar exams) that you have to start studying months in advance. I'm taking a fancy expensive prep course (thanks for paying for that, law firm). The great thing about the fancy expensive prep course is that it's preparing me for the Bar exam and I don't have to worry about figuring out what to study and when to study it. It just tells me what to do and I do it.

So. Many. Study books.

The bad thing about the fancy expensive prep course is that it wants me to do about 11 hours of stuff every day (not exaggerating). Seven days a week. Lectures, practice tests, practice essays, reading through outlines of substantive law, reviewing notes, more practice tests, etc. Most of my friends have stopped doing everything on the checklist each day (if they ever were to begin with), but y'all know me... I'm a relentless perfectionist, and I just. can't. live. with myself if I don't check off all the items every day.

This is where I'm spending most of my time these days... (craft room sneak peek!)

Of course, we keep taking weekend trips to visit family and friends (because that's what people do during the summer), so every Monday morning I'm 2-3 days behind, and I spend the whole week driving myself crazy catching up, just to get behind again the next weekend. 

All that to say, studying for the Bar exam is no fun, although I do think it's easier than law school itself, so there's that. It's just that I had this glorious picture in my mind of how I would spend my summer exercising in the mornings, studying in the late morning and afternoon, making dinner before Jeff got home, and having quality time with my husband in the evenings. And, uh... that's not happening. So naive. 

But after I finish the three days of Bar exam on August 1st, I do get a nice, long month off. And we will be vacationing BIG TIME. 

All that to say... I've been slacking on the blogging front lately, and it's entirely because I spend the WHOLE day staring at words and/or the computer screen all day doing Bar prep, and usually the last thing I want to do at the end of the day is stare at words on the computer screen some more.

But I'll try to do better! Promise. :)