THE RECAP Part I: THE BUILDUP

THE RECAP Part I: THE BUILDUP

Twas the summer of our collective discontent. (At least two-thirds of it was). As for the remaining one third, Summer I’ll make it up to you, baby. I know you miss me so far, cause we go back like red states and NASCAR.

But, for now, following is a rambling recap of the epic battle between yours truly, Young Atticus, and the biannual beast created by the evil synergy of the Missouri Board of Law Examiners and the National Conference of Bar Examiners. Certainly this was the one, and only focus of my summer, and ergo my life until it was completed.
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I have had some huge fights before, but this was without a doubt the biggest bout of my career, and definitely my first career title shot. I knew the gravity of it coming in.
I trained uncharacteristically hard for this bout. For almost two full months, I lived a chaste, very spartan life of academic preparation and study, only breaking to attend worship services and chat briefly with fellow barristers in training who were preparing for similar bouts. As the fight days drew near, my training regimen faltered a bit as I found myself burned out from my maniacal, even excessive preparation. After a 36 hour pause for regrouping in mid July, I regained my stamina and went into the title bout as strong as ever.

I pulled about nine consecutive all night study sessions at Washington University on the nights leading up to the fight. I actually went pretty hard; surprised myself even. I went at it super tough, and I was ready.

On Monday afternoon, the day before the test, I planned to spend the day doing the last essay topic that I wasn’t yet familiar with, secured transactions. I reviewed the topic, and surprisingly, it was not as dense and daunting as I thought it would be, which is why I had avoided it until then. Early evening intense prayer session with fellow barristers set to go to battle the next day. I knew that I had to get a decent night’s sleep, so I ordered a pizza, and tucked it in at about midnight, which I remembered thinking was he earliest that I had been to bed in months. Lights out.

Seven minutes into sleep…OH SHIT. I haven’t reviewed FAMILY LAW. At all. Since class. And in class, we were just filling in the blanks to review later. So basically, I don’t know family law, and it WILL be on the bar. Seven hours from now. Family law is second most frequent on the frequency chart. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? Doesn’t matter now, I just have gotta do it. But, I have to go to sleep or I will literally be staggering through the test in the morning. Wait…we have a 1.5 hour lunch break, and I already know what three of the four morning essays will be. Therefore, there is a one in ten chance that Family Law will show up in the morning. I’ll take those odds. I’ll review it at lunch.