A Writer’s Diary Entries From Early July, 2002
Monday, July 1, 2002
9 PM. Last evening I watched the final hour of Farewell, My Concubine, which was an incredible movie.
Then I fell into a deep sleep with one dream in which Grant was judging a talent contest I was taking part in and another in which I read a newspaper review of Cousin Jeff’s band which called it “avant-garde.”
I woke up with a bit of anxiety, but it passed after I got out of bed and had breakfast.
Today was another gloomy, dark, rainy day.
I was at the law school the entire day, but I didn’t go into my office at all, even though I could have gone there at 8 AM or after 4:30 PM when the BarBri MBE workshop finally let out.
Unfortunately, after all these sessions in rooms at the law school, the remaining sessions will be at Rolling Hills.
Sitting for another six hours gave me pain in my butt that radiated down to my shin and ankle, making me think that I have piriformis syndrome.
The two-hour sessions of going over the video answers were on Con Law, where I got 80% right; Crim Law, where I got about half right; and Torts, where I did abysmally, causing me to spend the last three hours studying Torts.
The way I did it is by first reading the notes from the PMBR and BarBri lectures and then going over the PMBR questions from the six-day workshop and the first workbook.
When I do all the questions, I get them wrong again – not because I don’t know the material in over half the cases, but because of the tricky wording of the PMBR questions.
If the MBE is really like the PMBR questions, then it’s an idiotic exam which probably lacks both validity and reliability.
Four weeks from tomorrow is the bar exam, and I feel I’ve been too cavalier about it. On the other hand, I can’t study the way David does. I just don’t care enough.
Gianni emailed from Paris that he started graduate school, going for his masters, and asking what plans I’ve made for the summer.
Of course, I have no plans. This is probably the most unpleasant summer of my life.
But I also know I’m a highly intelligent person, and I can see through some of the bullshit of the bar exam.
The one thing I feel certain of is if I don’t pass it this year, I’m not going to take it again. I’d rather leave my job – not that I love it so much anyway.
The good thing is that the results will be in by September, in time to make decisions about my lease and where I live and what I’ll be doing next.
I still sometimes think I would have been better off if I stayed in Arizona because I would have eventually adjusted to it and found some decent work there.
Yes, July 2002 will probably be the most miserable month of my life, and there have been a few strong contenders for that spot recently – like March or April when I suffered so much with sciatica.
I think that Nova Law School would have been better off if I had been able to devote the summer working on my fall schedule. I don’t really see how the bar exam will help me do my job better aside from renewing familiarity with the first-year curriculum.
If anyone thinks I can improve the school’s bar passage rate without the whole law school making it a priority, then they’re wrong. In Seattle, I learned that if an academic support professional makes bar passage the measure of her success, she’s bound to fail.
Anyway, I’m ready for bed.
Thursday, July 4, 2002
9:30 PM. I’m not happy.
My sciatica is about as bad as it has been in a month. my butt feels like it’s been badly bruised, and I’ve got pins and needles in my foot.
Since I didn’t do more sitting than usual, I’m not sure why my piriformis would be tightening up except because of stress.
I took my next-to-last Flexeril tonight, as well as a Vioxx, and I’ve been alternating the ice pack and heating pad, mostly because I don’t know what else to do.
Dr. Koncsol and everyone (except Teresa) tell me that I should remain in this position, but I recall during my therapy in Arizona how Susan consistently urged me to heed my body’s signals.
For months, my body has been telling me I’m stressed out – not that it would be strange to be stressed out about the bar exam, but it’s also so unnecessary.
A year ago, I may have felt anxiety about my future, but I was enjoying myself, spending July 4th in Jenkintown with Ronna’s family.
Today I’ve been studying the crappy MBE Crim Law and Contracts books. I hate this.
When I do the PMBR questions from the six-day workshop, I get the same damn questions wrong unless I’ve learned the “trick” of each question.
This evening I had a revelation: if the average mean score on the MBE is 123 raw, scaled to a 141, ten points above passing, then just as the BarBri test average was 108, tomorrow’s test should be even harder.
Why? because PMBR has to let you think they’re doing something extra. I figure if I get half the questions right, I’ll be doing fine.
Use your head to figure it out: if the simulated multi-state bar exams were like the real thing, the average student would be getting about 77 wrong and 123 right.
What could they do for two days of 12 hours or more of a workshop? Now, they don’t want many of us to do too badly on the PMBR questions because the students will panic and think we’re beyond help.
But they can’t let us do as well as we would on the real MBE because then they’d have nothing to teach us.
So they’ll have a lot of questions, almost half of them, where the answer is almost illogical.
After I started answering the last Crim Law questions with the least logical answer that didn’t seem absolutely wrong, my score started to improve.
Once you’ve learned the “trick” of a question, they can’t fool you again if you remember it.
See, I can look at this situation as an outsider. If the MBE is like the stupid simulated exams, then it’s an idiotic test, which is what I told the guy I recognized from Bar Bri who I saw at Barnes & Noble this morning.
He’s a young black man who told me he got less than half right in last weekend’s test. That could mean he has a problem, or he may not have a problem at all. Either way they’ve got him studying harder.
David freaked out last Saturday night when he figured he got 110 and didn’t know the average.
But if this “exam” had reliability, then a 108 average would equate to a 141 scaled score on the real MBE – so if you add 33 points, he’s getting a 143, and I’m getting a 142.
David believes the rumor that someone got a 140 raw score on the simulated exam, but that’s almost impossible.
Steve Friedland said that on the MBE, very few people get less than 60 right no matter what, and nearly everyone gets 60 wrong no matter what they do.
A 140 score would be about a 173 or more on the real MBE, and while that’s not impossible, it’s highly unlikely given that the average score was 108 last year.
BarBri and PMBR are sort of in a conspiracy with the Bar Examiners to make the test seem harder than it actually is.
On the other hand, 44% of Nova first time takers in February failed, so the test can’t be easy.
Hell, I don’t know what to think except it makes me angry that a test that has no proven validity – nobody’s ever shown that bar passage has anything to do with good or even competent lawyering – makes me and everyone else who takes it so crazy.
The other night I got upset that I applied for that job at the undergraduate school that pays only half of what I’m making now, but if this mishigas is what I have to deal with as ARP director, then I’d be a lot better off going to deal with undergraduates.
I remember this kid at UF law school, Michael, who told me he’d figured it out that the profession of attorney was basically “a racket.” He could see through the baloney, and I can, too.
Maybe my problem is that I can’t believe in anything. What are MFA programs in creative writing doing, taking students who can never really be writers?
Not that the programs don’t make people better readers, and yes, they do much to improve the students’ writing. but law schools teach students how to analyze problems and think more clearly and certainly provide a lot of information.
I don’t know. Sometimes I think that bitter, angry student Sheri was right when she accused Nova Law of being a scam just to take the students’ money.
Well, it’s 10 PM, and the Independence Day firecrackers have been exploding for hours, and I haven’t even said much about how I spent today.
After waking up at 4 AM, I couldn’t get back to sleep after a dream that took place in Brooklyn at our old house on East 56th Street. Somehow we bought it back and my parents and brothers and I were living there again, but for some reason my parents had decided to sell the house again and a prospective buyer came over and made an offer that they accepted.
Because I didn’t want to take a Klonopin two mornings in a row, I lay in bed and felt really anxious.
Probably it was a mistake to have iced tea at Barnes & Noble, where I read the Times and the Sun-Sentinel, which printed my letter on the Supreme Court drug testing decision today.
Then at Wendy’s, I had not only a baked potato with ketchup but also a Diet Coke.
After dinner, my acid reflux got really bad. Well, I’ve got Vioxx, Triavil and Flexeril in me, and if I’m not asleep by 11:30 PM, I’m going to take an Ambien since I haven’t used it in a week.
Monday, July 8, 2002
9 PM. I didn’t sleep well last night, but I got enough rest to get through the day.
After yesterday’s deep depression, my mood softened, if not brightened. I’m just sucking it up and going to get through this as best I can.
I exercised at 6:30 AM, and this evening, after dinner, I took a half-hour walk at 6 PM.
My sciatica hurts, although it’s no worse than yesterday.
At the hotel this morning, a lot of people seemed to be wiped out by the PMBR workshop, and a lot of people were complaining about Kenny Dym.
I wish they’d brought someone else down from New York so those of us who took the six-day workshop could have gotten a different perspective; I didn’t need to hear Kenny’s same old horror stories over again.
Today’s video lecture was on Florida Constitutional Law, which I don’t have a solid grasp of even though there is sure to be an essay on it. The next two days deal with Partnerships and Corporations, and if they test those, I feel sunk.
Since they tested those subjects in February, they probably won’t test them again in July, but who knows?
I’m not sure if I prefer the bar exam lectures to be at Nova or at Rolling Hills, but at the hotel at least I can get away from my job. Too bad I can’t pretend I’m at the country club in Caddyshack with Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Murray.
After lunch, at around 1:30 PM, I came into the office. Pat was out today, but Joe had sent me a memo about getting Nova Institutional Research to do a study on our bar passage rate, and Billie Jo left me some study software to look at and give her my “gut feeling” opinion about.
Also, Francois stopped by. He raised his GPA above 2.0, but just barely, and although he just had a simple question I could answer easily, we ended up talking for quite a while.
Otherwise, I did 75 Torts questions from the second PMBR workbook, getting about two-thirds of them right.
I figure I can get through this workshop (except for the sample exam) by next week. But I also know that I will forget a lot of it if I don’t keep reinforcing what I’ve learned.
I wrote to Gianni, thanking him for sending his essay on North African immigrants in France; it wasn’t brilliant, but it was well-crafted even though Gianni had said it was just the first draft. I always knew Gianni was smart.
I told him that the United States is currently undergoing one of its periodic bouts of Francophobia.
After dinner, I did 75 Florida Civ Pro questions and read the Conviser Mini-Review outline for Florida Family Law.
Another day gone.
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
9:30 PM. I slept all right last night, though it seems I can never get more than six hours of sleep, and I always rest better in the earlier part of the night.
I had one pleasant dream in which Grandma Ethel, Aunt Claire and I were in Macy’s Herald Square, and Aunt Claire told us she was going to Kenya to buy Rosenthal china.
This morning I felt anxious. There are times when I wonder if my anxiety will ever end. It seems as if it started nearly two years ago, on that Sunday late in July 2000, when my car overheated and I got stuck at Greenfield Road and Southern Avenue in East Mesa.
A few days later, after the car was supposedly fixed, it kept overheating, often on the Superstition Freeway, including on the day I rented my apartment at Quail Creek.
After all those problems with the car, I started trembling and felt so cold that Mom gave me a blanket even though it was 115° out.
Compared to summers in Phoenix, it has been dark and cool here in South Florida.
Sat Darshan said the monsoon began last night. Here, we’ve had constant rain, but I haven’t felt hot.
Anyway, this morning I left the house feeling antsy.
Joe had sent an email to me, Pat, and various faculty. Yesterday he talked about his plan for remediation with Donna and Steve, and he said he wanted to put forth a proposal to diagnose our high-risk students at Orientation with either a case briefing or a written outlining exercise.
I was the first one to reply, saying I thought the idea was a good one, although I felt that the Orientation daytime schedule was very tight and I didn’t think that it was the right time to do this.
Pearl weighed in, agreeing with me and putting forth some other ideas.
I found more replies after I returned to the office at 1 PM, and later, Paul Joseph and Mike Masinter also responded.
When I spoke to Pat in the mid-afternoon, she said I’m right about Orientation. Apparently she’ll be on vacation again next week.
I realized that in some ways I am comfortable at Nova Law. I’ve gotten to know the personalities; I could sarcastically tell Pat, after she mentioned an upcoming meeting with the difficult Bob Jervis, “I’m sure you’ll enjoy dealing with him.”
I got pretty lost during today’s BarBri video lecture on Corporations. I just pray that they don’t test Business Entities on multiple choice this time; in addition to Civ Pro, Crim Pro and Evidence, they test one or two other subjects, and I am hoping that Wills is the other one this year.
David says the Florida multiple-choice questions are very hard and that they are not at all like the Florida questions in the Florida Testing book from BarBri.
This evening I worked from 7 PM to 9:30 PM, finishing the Florida Civil Procedure and Partnership questions, getting at least half of them wrong, and reading the Conviser Mini-Review outline of Florida Criminal Procedure.
At the office in the afternoon, I did my 50 MBE questions on Criminal Law, getting 30 of them right.
David stopped by, freaking out a little after doing badly on Con Law questions. He had lunch with a friend from St. Thomas, who failed the February bar exam; the guy is not taking BarBri or PMBR this time.
I don’t know what some people are thinking.
I emailed Sat Darshan and Teresa, and Gianni sent me a nice note, thanking me for the kind words I gave him about his essay.
Today I read only a little of the New York Times online: maybe five or six articles or columns. But it’s crunch time.
When I got home, I did laundry, had a bite to eat, and went to the bank to deposit the $957 check that I got from Nova, reimbursing me for my Seattle hotel room and cab fare.
That money will help keep my bill-paying going for a while without my having to take out any new cash advances.
I went to the Publix at Pine Island Plaza, which is where Mom used to shop. It’s a more upscale store and has a wider selection of groceries than the Publix on University and Griffin, where I usually shop.
After coming home, I unloaded my groceries, put away my laundry, put some bill payments into their envelopes for mailing, and only then started to study.
When Aunt Sydelle called, it was a welcome break.
She said that Barbara must really be sick because Scott is taking her to Los Angeles next week to a specialist at Cedars-Sinai after the Johns Hopkins doctors couldn’t help her.
Sydelle went to her internist yesterday, but she hasn’t yet gotten the report on her blood sugar.
Today wasn’t so bad.
Friday, July 12, 2002
9 PM. As I expected, yesterday’s calm could not last.
It lasted until I fell asleep, only to wake up from periodic nightmares in which I was driving around New York City being chased by a hideous monster called Multistate.
Actually, it’s the Florida portion of the bar exam I’m more worried about. Although Steve Friedland’s live BarBri lecture on Florida Criminal Procedure also included many hints about studying, it made me more anxious.
Steve said we should be studying six hours a day, but most days I don’t even study for four hours.
According to Steve, we all have that bug-on-the-windshield look, and from talking with David and other people, I know that we’re all going through anxiety, though our moods keep changing.
I expect to go up and down over the next couple of weeks. I know I need to learn Florida Con Law, Florida Civ Pro, Florida Crim Pro and Florida Evidence, but there’s just so much to do.
It’s impossible to cram everything in there. It’s better to know a few things and the big picture, and I know them well.
I did 25 Property questions this afternoon and 50 Evidence questions, and I’m getting around 60% of them right. But I keep hearing about people who scored in the 84th or 95th percentile on the BarBri and PMBR exams.
Well, I’ve been doing the MBE questions for over two months now. Some days I feel sure I can pass the MBE provided I don’t freak out.
I didn’t respond to a long post by Joe Harbaugh and responses by Steve, Joe Grohman, and Billie Jo about the proposed Orientation exercise/diagnostic.
I think this proposal will make a lot more work for me, and unlike the others, who don’t seem to mind, I feel burdened by my job.
Maybe it’s just that I’m lazy. This morning I forgot to take Prevacid, and my stomach was okay today despite the caffeine in iced tea and soda.
There’s a first-year student, Ryan, who’s transferring out of Nova, who has some furniture for sale. Ryan was going to show it to me tonight, but of course we had another severe thunderstorm.
Pat was out today, and I think she’ll be gone next week.
In my pay stub, I noticed that I suddenly have 165 hours of vacation time in addition to my two personal days and the six sick days I’ve accrued.
I can use them any time before next July 1. I suppose I could take off the week after the bar exam, but I have so much to do for the fall semester.
I checked my reservation for the Hyatt Regency in Tampa for Monday, July 28. The night before, I’ll be at the Howard Johnson Inn.
David said he’s actually going to his hotel by the Convention Center on Saturday.
I’m concerned about the logistics, but I’m like David; I will cover all my bases.
David told me that he barely graduated from Adelphi after a few years at Quinnipiac, and he did quite badly his first year in law school.
I’ve never struggled academically, though I felt pretty stupid as a first-semester law student. However, once I got my grades and two book awards, I felt confident. Of course, I’m not trying to get an A on the bar exam; if I were, I would work a lot harder. I just have to be in the 70% or so who pass.
At our therapy session, Dr. K said that maybe if I had a job with lesser responsibilities at Nova, I could have more joie de vivre (a term he used twice) in my life. I am a writer first and foremost, after all, and then secondly I may also be a teacher. Dr. K said that undergraduates are the most fun to work with, which is probably true.
I told him I will never have the commitment to law school academic support that I saw among the people at the LSAC Academic Assistance Training Workshop in Seattle.
Hell, I don’t even have the commitment that Mark Padin, Jane Cross, Kathy Cerminara, and Steve Friedland at Nova have for it.
“For you, it’s a job,” Dr. K said, “a way to earn a living.”
We talked about the pressures of the bar exam in the four weeks since I last saw him and the levels of my anxiety.
I’ve got another appointment with Dr. K on the Saturday before I leave for Tampa, and you know I’ll be a wreck at that time. It will be like my last therapy appointment, the week before I left for Seattle.