Bar Studying, Week Three

So, studying for the bar is . . . what it is.  It is considerably more work than law school, and in fact I am already discarding some of the tasks assigned.  I cannot work on this ten hours a day, seven days a week, for ten straight weeks.  It is a lot of info to cram into one’s brain, and it’s a marathon, and I feel myself tiring out too early in the game.  So Imma slow down the pace a smidge.  The Paced Program invites you to answer sixty bazillion practice questions after class every day, and I think I’ll whittle that down to a more reasonable 40 or so.  Being in week three is helpful, because I am getting a feel for how this works and for how to make it work for me, and also feeling less wedded to the Paced Program.  It’s also far enough away from the bar that I’m not too freaked out by the fact that in yesterday’s practice exam, out of 17 Property questions I got 4 correct.  (ZOINKS!)

The family is away at the moment on a beach vacation, leaving me here alone with two (normally pleasant, occasionally irritating) dogs and my ever-lovin’ laptop.  (I am beginning to hate this laptop.  It’s always with me.)  My days go like this: wake, usually with the sun, and make coffee.  Check the chlorine level in the pool.  Come back, pour a cup of coffee, drink it.  Take the dogs on a long walk.  Come home, watch class video while sitting on the couch in the house.  Take a midday break to exercise (I ran 10 miles two days ago, yesterday I took a long walk and then came back and swam for half an hour).   Shower.  Take the dogs and the books and the laptop out back to the pool, and work problems and review notes at the table out there while the dogs frolic in the grass.  Make dinner, eat, dishes.  Do a little yoga.  Take the dogs on another long walk (I try to avoid the heat, so we go at dusk and dawn).  Come home, work a few more problems, watch a half hour of tv, fall asleep on the couch.  Go to bed.

It’s not a bad life.  So far, while the fam’s been gone, I’ve managed to see and enjoy friends every other day, so I’m not super lonely.  There are moments when I can’t look at this bloody laptop screen for another second, and those are the times I go out and exercise, or exercise the dogs.  There are also those moments when I think about something specific about my children and it makes me miss them sharply, like Liam’s profile when he has his thumb in his mouth, or Jack’s face when he’s trying not to smile.  I’ve been talking to The Professor daily, but missing him, too.  Despite these occasional pining-for-my-family moments, a week of “me time” is a rarity, and I have not wasted this one with too much wailing and gnashing of teeth.  They healthy, happy, perfect, and only temporarily gone, and so I will exercise like crazy, eat exactly what I want (and eat a meal through without getting up once!), study what I need to study for as long as I need to study it, and enjoy a brief respite from the daily grind of being a mother of two preschoolers.

(But when they come back and I see that car pull in the drive, I’ll be happy to see them all!)