Oh how I have missed you all! I can tell by the flowers and cards that you have missed me as well – please just keep in mind I live in a very small studio and I am running out of room for all the stuffed animals and chocolates. Cash, on the other hand, folds nicely in to a wallet and slips easily through my fingers.

I am now a full-time 9-5er working for a large, inefficient, bureaucratic government agency. While my job is great in that I get to sit here and write a post to fulfill my seriously-neglected duties to this here blog (fortunately “El Oso, El Moreno, and El Guy-Who-Never-Posts” doesn’t flow very well or I’m sure Oso would have changed the name months ago), it is lacking in that I do not get paid a single penny. That’s right ladies and gentlemen (and Republicans), the largest, richest, most powerful Government in the history of the world hires poor, starving, massively endebted law students to work 40 hours a week for nothing. Sure, this has happened throughout history, but in the past they would have had to clothe and feed their slaves. Now we naïve lawyer wannabes eagerly take the scraps they throw at us and are happy to have them. Just think how pretty my résumé will look!

So, what have I been doing with myself? Funny you should ask. Lately, I have been living in a bit of a post-1L haze that is 2-parts post-traumatic stress disorder, 1-part anticipatory anxiety, and 1-part sheer orgasmic release. Sometime around 8 weeks ago, I began to feel a muted but lingering sort of panic. Now, I don’t really stress out. The only things that get me riled up are (1) running out of beer when the liquor stores are closed, and (2) well, that’s about it. There was plenty of beer, so panic should have been averted, however there was this unfamiliar nagging feeling that crept in to my gut each time I glimpsed one of those infamous red and black tomes of death know as a casebook. Yes, exams were upon me.

Very rarely do I prepare in advance for things. I am impetuous. Spontaneous! Exciting! Or maybe exceedingly lazy and disorganized. It’s not important. The point is, I had pretty much neglected to do all of my reading for two classes, and the other two I had basically ceased attending (at least in a conscious mental state) in February (shortly after discovering RBI baseball on everyvideogame.com. Still, this is how I have lived my entire academic life; I am used to adapting and accepting the consequences that months of slacking perpetuate: cramming. My mind, however, is stubborn. It will not function until absolutely necessary, and then only reluctantly, sporadically between 12 and 4 a.m., and only when coaxed by quasi-legal stimulants and 3 packs of cigarettes.

We have a week before the first exam. I have a plan…I have many plans. I have a calendar, and I’ve drawn a little schedule with the blocks of hours corresponding to classes I will read for and cases I will memorize. I open the book. Then comes that little panic feeling. I go to the bathroom. Still the panic feeling. I read a case from the first week of Civil Procedure, my first exam.

Mental dialogue follows:

“What? What are they talking about? Hang on…Did we go over this? There is highlighting and that is my handwriting.” [Check the syllabus.] “It’s there, but I don’t remember talking about it.” [Look at class notes. Pages of notes on the case.] “Did I type these? What the hell is going on here…?”

This process repeated itself countless times over the next few days. Slowly, slowly I learn federal civil procedure. Nonmutual offensive collateral estoppel. The reverse-Kroger scenario. § 1441, 1367, Article III, section 2 p. 1 line 4. etc. etc. etc. But this is bad. That week was cram time for all my exams, not just civ pro. My calendar is in tatters. I take the stupid exam. It is a long, detailed issue spotter. A fact pattern I can hardly understand, but that I understand to mean “Write down everything you know about this class in the next 3.5 hours.” So I do. It is incoherent, babbling. I say Erie when I mean International Shoe, I mix up the Asahi test with Hanna Path 1. It’s ugly, but it’s over. Each time I walk out of an exam, I leave a piece of my soul.

Whether you are a smoker or not, I would bet a substantial amount of money that there is nothing better than a cigarette after a 4 hour law school exam. I would gladly shun sex, drugs and rock and roll, for that first post-exam drag – just before you come down from the Red Bull and coffee, before the Sominex and No-Doze reaction in your bloodstream has subsided, before the sheer greatness of your utter and complete failure has struck you and the adrenaline is still fooling you in to thinking you may have passed…

For some reason our last exam was on Monday, and it was Property. I have nothing to say about Property other than that I can honestly say I have never felt so inept and completely incompetent in my entire life (at least since that one night in the summer of 1997). But, alas, it was over. The campus had been deathly silent for weeks. People were huddled in the library
at all hours, the weather had been terrible, people you had known for the past 8 months walked by without smiling or saying hi. But suddenly, the place turned in to a theme park. Everyone is drinking everywhere; frisbees and footballs are flying around the quad, hugs abound. It was a nerd carnival. The post-exams party was at the notorious Big Hunt, a personal favorite of yours truly. I’ve never had a bad time there – at least not that I remember.

But there is no rest for the weary. Our always considerate school demanded us out of our rooms by the weekend. Then came the Write On competition, which can only be described as one last self-flagellation for the Masochistic Law Students of America (of which I am a shameful member). Finally, it’s over. Of course, there is still work, grades, journal results, early interview week etc. But the hard part is over, and now I can tell all the 1L’s I meet: “Don’t worry…It’s not that bad.”

So there you have it. A long winded excuse for my prolonged absence. Hopefully sometime before I succumb to complete lethargy I will write up a post summarizing the last nine months.
But don’t count on it.