Thursday, July 22, 2021

corner time and bar exam preparation

 Hi everybody,

many of you have contacted me in the last weeks and asked how I am doing. I did  not reply much (if at all...) to these emails, but today I will give you all an update and answer some of the most asked questions. 

I am feeling emotionally pretty stable. My depression has gotten better. Thank goodness.

I am gonna write the California bar exam on 7/27 and 7/28. It will be a remote exam, I can actually take it from my bedroom. 

I did not take a bar preparation course. One reason for it was that I did not want to invest the thousands and thousands of $$$ that these companies charge, and furtermore I know from my german bar exam experience that I learn best alone.

I am however once in a while participating in a zoom group study session with a very fine teacher.

Even though there is not really much at stake for me,  I am not even sure if I even want to work as a lawyer in the US, nevertheless the nervous energy of the people who are trying to pass the bar exam has fully reached me. I am nervous as hell. I dont even know why I am that nervous, lol, but I am. I guess the exam triggers all sorts of fears and believes. I dont wanna fail. On the exam and or in life in general. I want to pass this frigging exam. 

As many of you know, the workload for the bar exam is massive. And the fact that English is not my first language is not helping. I can definitely feel that my language skills have improved in the last weeks, but nevertheless I am seeing a lot of words that I had never seen before in my life.

Anyway, in less than a week it will be over. :-)

In preparation for the exam, we had to take a couple of mock exams. Which leads me to the subject of "corner time". I have never actually been sent to a corner. And I know for a fact now that I wont ever want to experience it, lol.

As I said, we had to take the mock exams and these exams were pure hell.  Think of being forced to do a fond of writing exercise, while on a camera and an angry mistress is watching you. This is exactly what I experienced, lol. 

I had to stay in front of the computer for 90 minutes, the camera was on , everything I did or not did was recorded and will be recorded for eternity, I guess.  My face had to be in the center of the frame, I was not alllowed to look somewhere else, I was not allowed to speak, I was not allowed to stand up and stretch, I was not allowed to even drink a sip of water. All I had to do was sitting in front of the camera, answering super hard questions, and writing legal essays in a foreign language. It was pure hell. 

I am following a few guys on fetlife, guys who are into writing endless lines as punishment and who get sent to a corner regularly if they missbehave. It is hot in theory, lol, but my bar exam corner time was unpleasant as fuck. I remember thinking: what, my fetlife friends are actually CRAVING these feelings?  ;-)

Anyway, that's it for now. Wish me luck. I will be back here on July 29. In the meantime I will be studying, studying, studying. :-)