Weekend in Idaho

This weekend, George and I went to Idaho for Misha and Aaron's wedding. Misha is a friend from law school who will be starting her final year in a month or so.

The main event was held at Woodriver Cellars. The ceremony and reception were beautiful, elegant, touching, personal, emotional, sunny, and quite warm.

While we were in the Boise area, we went whitewater rafting; it was relatively tame, but I still ended up swimming. Ha!

We also went wine tasting. While the wine was not world class, it was quite drinkable. Moreover, we met characters at every single winery. Unlike places like Napa, these wineries are run by families that only produce a few hundred cases a year. Most of them even offered tastings for free. We checked out Bitner Vineyards, Koenig Distillery and Winery, Hells Canyon Winery, and Indian Creek Winery. Yum. Fun. Refreshing.

The icing on the cake was waiting in my mailbox when we got home last night. It looks like I've actually graduated.

For more photos from the weekend, check out Picasa.

The End.

The exam ended nearly 5 hours ago. I'm still alive but really exhausted. The answer to the million dollar question (when are results published?) is October 18 at http://www.wsba.org/.

Besides that, I don't really know what to write.

I have gone through 20 years of formal education, 2 months of torturous bar prep, and 2.5 days of exam craziness...all waiting for this moment to arrive. Now that it's finally here, all I can get my brain to do is alternate between random, geeky legal thoughts and urges to sleep. I have no idea how I feel (besides tired). I have no idea what I feel like doing (besides relieving the constant feeling of guilt for not studying). It's going to take some time to feel fully human again (i.e. live without reducing everything to elements of a legal issue, type without counting characters, live more than 45-minutes at a time, relax without thinking of how many essays await).

I'm going to attempt to get back to normal by watching a movie, having a drink with friends, doing laundry, getting a massage, and celebrating a friend's wedding. That sounds like a good start. :-)

Day 2

I'm pleased to report that I have survived the substantive portion of the bar exam. In the past two days, I wrote 18 essay questions totaling 13.5 hours of writing time. I feel moderately confident, though I felt a lot more confident before those last three questions this afternoon. (Can they possibly fail everyone when the call of the question was completely unclear and facts pointed to a topic supposedly not tested?)

Needless to say, I'm exhausted and less than excited about diving into professional responsibility, tested in 6 short essay questions after 6:30am registration tomorrow morning. Here goes...

Day 1

I'm pleased to report that I have survived the first day of the exam, and I'm even smiling about it.

T-Minus Way Too Little Time

I am feeling an overwhelming, paralyzing amount of stress with the start of the bar exam approximately 18 hours away. And, because I'm short on time to type out how I'm feeling, I'll leave you with a link to Above the Law and just a few words of my own.

Do I think I'm going to pass? Probably, but plenty of people who are smarter and better prepared than me have not passed the bar the first time through, so I know that failure is a very real possibility. Ultimately, I do not know (and will not know until mid-October) whether what I know is enough, but I do not know what more I could have done to prepare over the past two months. So, I'll study for a few more hours, eat some dinner, attempt to forget about the exam, attempt to sleep, and go to the Meydenbauer Center in the morning knowing that I'm about to leave it all on the field.

(Thank you for your cards, calls, texts, and email. I promise to respond eventually.)