Once again, with feeling

I was going to post this on my private journal, but really- what's the point of having a bar exam blog if I'm going to sanitize it for fear some mythical audience that isn't even paying attention anyway is going to think less of me?

So. The bar exam is only about 4 weeks away now, and my study habits keep getting more and more lax. I can't focus on my work for more than 20 minutes at a time, I can't motivate myself to do practice questions, and I keep looking at my stuff and thinking, "It's no use, I'm never going to remember any of this." I'm desperately frustrated and scared and at the moment, depressed.

The whole bar exam is just ludicrously stupid to begin with. I'm on the hook for more than $60k worth of loans, I spent 3 years taking classes and writing and researching and yes, dammit, even practicing a bit. Am I going to come out of the chute as a fantastic lawyer? Of course not, no one does. But I fail to see how the experience of freaking out about the bar exam for 12 weeks is going to make me a better lawyer, or how an arbitrary test is going to accurately measure my capacity to practice. I can see a little bit of wisdom in the essay portion, although I still question the value of timed essay-writing as a measurement of legal skill. At least you're sort of measuring something: presumably the test-taker's ability to read a fact pattern and quickly pick out the legal issues and have some kind of clue what to do. (Also the ability to write, which is a skill that should be tested, IMO.)

Still in all, it's a relatively silly exercise, considering that the primary basis for our future legal opinions is going to be research into the law, not some vague principles we kind of remember from law school. If there is one thing I've learned from law school, it is that if you don't check the law, physically go and look at it, you are a moron.

And then there's the MBE. Yes, I'm sure the ability to read a half page of text and snap off an opinion on an obscure aspect of common law will be tremendously useful in my future career. I imagine that clients walk into your office, slam down a multiple choice question, and shriek, "Quick! You only have 1.8 minutes to render a legal opinion on this!" on a daily basis. My favorite questions are the ones where the answer makes no sense whatsoever- ie, you actually have to have insufficient knowledge to pick the answer they deem is "right." (I know you bar-takers know what I mean.) My second favorite type is where the subject of the question is some obscure branch of law that no one gives a damn about anyway, and if they did they would look it up.

Because even though the test is all about rote memorization of factoids, you can't just, you know, ask a question. That would make too much sense. You have to make it a goddamn logic puzzle, the goal if which is not to test your ability to select the right answer but trick you into selecting the wrong answer. The MBE is less important than the essay, but unless you're an essay god (and I don't have that much self-confidence) you need to get a decent score on the multiple choice, and when I get freaking six out of seventeen right I start to get a little agitated. Die MBE, die.

Anyway. I can't be the only person feeling this insane right now, can I? I hope not. I know I need to shake it off and keep studying and doing questions, but we come back to the same problem of difficulty concentrating. Vicious, evil circle. Can I just wake up in January and have this all be over with?