All righty then

In the first Writing for the Bar class, they gave us a homework assignment to prepare us to do practice essays next class. Essentially the assignment consists of listing basic factoids about tort and contract law, such as the elements and defenses for a list of intentional torts, and the significance of consideration. Basic stuff, right? In trying to do this assignment tonight, I learned two things:

1. I don't remember nearly as much as I thought I did. Not terribly surprising, but disheartening nonetheless.
2. My first-year outlines are for shit. This is not surprising in the least- I had yet to recognize the value of outlining as a study tool (writing outlines helps me learn) and I was not thinking about when I would be struggling to recall this information for the bar exam with little more to guide me than a half-ass outline and pages of near-illegible notes (interspersed with sketches and random scribbling).

Still, it's enough to make me want to travel back to 2003 and slap myself right in the face. Comparing my torts outline to this assignment, I'm extremely annoyed- people always said my torts professor was bad, and I defended her, but now I think I agree. I don't even remember covering half these torts and they sure aren't in my outline- nuisance? Inteference with contract? Huh? In the case of contracts, I know it's my fault. For a start, my professor was excellent...and there's also the fact that my outline cuts off in mid-phrase. Thanks a lot, younger me. Then, my outlines seem to exist in an organizational world entirely my own. They bear no resemblence to the structure of the homework assignment. So, yeah, we'll be hitting the Barbri outlines this weekend to fill in the gaps. I'll dig out my old notes, too, but I doubt they'll help. (My notes are so bad that I feel obliged to offer a disclaimer to classmates who copy them after an absence. Like my outlines, they exist in a realm that makes sense only to the version of myself that existed in late 2003.)

Anyway, I'm thinking I'm going to establish a warming-up period this semester...schedule a couple hours each weekend (maybe it should be more, but I doubt my ability to enforce more than that upon myself) to start bar prep. Maybe Saturday afternoon would be good. I think that would help, both in terms of preparation and in terms of getting all the oh my god I can't do this I'm going to live in a cardboard box ahhhhhh out of my system before we get close enough to the exam that it'll make me choke.