A Sum Walks Into a Bar...

(insert canned laughter)

Yeah, so rather than write up 50 e-mails, make 50 phone calls, or send out a generic mass-email to people who might be curious as to how day one of the exam went, I decided to post on the blog (Not that there are 50 interested people, I would just call/email 5 people 10 times each).

After attempting to go to bed at 10 pm last night, I tossed and turned for over two hours, even though I took two Tylenol PM tablets at 9:45 pm. The last time I checked the time, it was 12:09 am, so I fell asleep at some point after that. The next thing I knew, I was given a not-so-pleasant wake-up alarm from my cell phone at 6:05 am. Thus began day one of the Virginia Bar Exam.

I took my time while eating breakfast and reviewed some notes, then, while getting ready I realized mistake #1. I left my belt at home. Now, six months ago, this would not have been a problem since I was bursting at the seams due to my excessive weight. Unfortunately, at about 25-30 lbs lighter, the lack of a belt caused a problem, especially since I planned on walking to the testing site. In the end, I made do and no, my pants did not fall off at any point. But I'm glad y'all got a chuckle at picturing the sight.

The morning session consisted of 5 essay questions on various topics of the law. It wasn't too horrible, though there was one subsection of question two that I had NO CLUE about. I sat there, staring out into space, trying to recall every word in my notes and every word spoken by the lecturers during my course. Finally I decided that I wasn't going to remember, so I just moved on. Good call by me, especially given the 36 minutes per essay that we had (5 essays, 3 hours, do the math).

After an apple and a "refreshing" turkey and cheese sandwich prepared by me in my hotel room, I decided to review my notes on family law and wills and trusts since neither topic was tested in the morning session and both are regularly tested on the Virginia exam. This counted as good call #2 because both were indeed tested in the afternoon essays. Unfortunately, mistake #2 was spending too much time reviewing the family law and not enough time on wills. Consequently, my wills essay was not as strong as it could have been. But oh well.

The afternoon portion of today consisted of 4 essays and 20 short answer questions, meaning a mix of fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice. Unfortunately, the first essay question of the afternoon left me "mortified and stupefied" as well as "shocked and chagrined." I sat there and just stared at it, trying to recall anything on the topic. But, no matter how much pressure I put on my feeble brain, I couldn't conjure up any memories of that subject area. So what did I do? That's right ... I made up the law. I hammered out 5 paragraphs based on my random invention of Virginia law and just moved on.

Overall, the day was okay. The morning session was much stronger for me than the afternoon, but I think I did well. In any case, it's in the past. Now I'm just waiting for "Success China Buffet" to deliver my Moo Shu Chicken. Tomorrow is the Multistate Bar portion of the exam. It consists of 200 multiple choice questions (100 in the morning and 100 in the afternoon) covering six areas of law (Contracts, Criminal Law, Evidence, Constitutional Law, Torts and Property Law).

So far so good. 'Til next time ...