Last night I was getting lots of studying done (torts, commercial paper, secured transactions) at the Peninsula hotel. And then this baby showed up. Accompanied by parents, of course.

The baby cried for an hour straight, and I wish I were exaggerating.

So…what’s society’s stance on taking crying babies into fancy restaurants? Are we cool with it? Do we sympathize with the parents who have enough to worry about without trying to hunt down a trustworthy babysitter on a weeknight…or do we want (deserve?) some peace and quiet when we’re paying to eat at a nice place? ($16 for lobster ravioli appetizer, which, I learned, contained four pieces of ravioli…COME on.)

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On Friday night at 1AM, I ran into one of my classmates at Sigara, which is a hookah lounge in Wicker Park.  I’m pretty sure this guy was at the very top of our graduating class.  Here’s the story he recounted to me:

“My cousin took the bar last year.  He said he did barely any studying in June.  He constantly left the BarBri review lectures early, and got wasted every night.  A week before the exam, reality hit; he got serious and spent every single hour studying.  And guess what?  He passed.  He told me this: “If you just study for one hour every day, you’ll be fine.”

And now, a somewhat related statistic: Last year, of all the students in the upper-half of DePaul’s graduating class (of 220 or so), all but six passed the bar. 

So what the hell am I supposed to do with this anecdote and statistic?  Using them as an excuse to study less?  Probably not.  Any suggestions?

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Is it possible to burn out after just eight days of studying for the bar? No—right? Then what the hell happened to me today? I went to Barnes & Noble, Hyatt, The Millennium Knickerbocker…and got nearly nothing done. I read long sentences again and again, retaining nothing; I felt like I was back in Property class.

Hmm…maybe that’s because I was studying Property…

I should have taken a break and regained my focus. But I felt so guilty about not getting any studying done that I refused to take a break. I’ll probably dream about studying for the bar tonight.

Woke up and went to the Hyatt hotel to study for the bar exam. Came back to my apartment for lunch. Went to the Peninsula hotel to study for the bar exam. Came back to my apartment to work out. Went to the Intercontinental hotel to study for the bar exam. Came back to my apartment to write this blog entry, watch LOST, and go to sleep.

Wait...this is probably the sort of day I shouldn't be blogging about...sorry!

I’ve been a fan of Penn & Teller my whole life. I’ve seen their show three or four times, and I truly believe that they perform the smartest, most deceptive/hardest to figure out magic out there.

You might also know Penn & Teller from their Emmy-nominated TV show Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t

Anyways…Penn, the larger, louder half of the performing team had this to say about my book:

"Rick Lax is really funny and uses his background in magic to see through the bullshit and hypocrisy that make up the law school experience. I'm really glad he's getting the law degree so he has a job other than magic—we don't need this kind of competition."

IN OTHER NEWS. My Bar Exam review materials are supposed to come in the mail today or tomorrow.

I don’t know how big the books are/how many pages they have…but I do know that the tracking e-mail says that the package is THIRTY-FIVE POUNDS.

Whenever somebody contracts some awful disease or undergoes some awful family tragedy and gets interviewed by the local news about it, they always say the same thing: “You see this in the news all the time, but you never think it can happen to you. And then one day it does…”

I think failing the bar exam is the opposite. Everybody thinks it will happen to them, but it only really happens to a select few. I realized that early on, that the math says I’ll likely pass the bar exam, so I haven‘t been too worried about it. Well, yesterday I found out that one of my friends took the bar exam six months ago…and failed it.
 
Sure, she took it during the school year, so she probably didn’t have enough time to study. But still, she’s a smart girl and she failed. Took a prep class and everything. Now it’s starting to hit home. Some people really fail this thing.

Tomorrow I’m going to figure out how to get my hands on review books. And then, beginning Monday, I’m going to start studying. I’m going to try to study all day, every day. Oh, and I’m going to work all day, every day to promote Lawyer Boy.