I'm currently watching the movie Cry-Baby. Nice one to relax to. Does mean it's gonna take me a bit to finish this post. Hard to type and watch a movie at the same time.
Tomorrow is the Multistate (aka MBE) over at the Connecticut Expo Center. 100 multiple guess in the morning and 100 more in the afternoon, two 3-hour sessions. Oh joy.
Quickie on today. The 5 essay topics: Contracts/Corp. Agency/Professional Responsibility, Crim. Law/Crim. Pro, Dom. Rel./Fed. Juris., Torts/____, & Wills. The MPT was a persuasive letter to a Zoning Committee for rezoning a residential house so the owner could relocate her geriatric dentistry with a side of pro bono.
So the title of this post: Grimace, Squawk & Cypress (It relates to the exam today, I promise!)
My mascot for this 3-day exam-sitting ordeal is a little, pencil-sharpener shaped like GRIMACE, you know - the big, amorphous purple McDonald's spokes-thing of yore. (Picture here, More here and here.) The security notices say pencil sharpeners are allowed so every day, even Thursday when I'm only using pen, he'll sit there with me, silently cheering me on. Every now and then, when my mind strays, I look at him and smile or chuckle quietly to myself. Then I get back to the exam.
During the BarBri course, at some point, and it might have been the Essay Advantage guy, they gave us a suggestion for the essays. The guy said something like "making the right sounds," as in try to put something relevant down for your essay answer that sounds like something coherent and meaningful. Hopefully they'll give you points for being on-point if not actually thorough or right. So if you make sounds like a bird you SQUAWK. This too was running through my mind today.
The fourth question in the last essay, on Wills, asked about the cy pres doctrine. I missed the BarBri Wills day so I had absolutely no clue what the cy pres doctrine is. My second thought (my first consisted of laughing quietly to myself) was to put down something silly, something like:
The cy pres doctrine refers to a small island off the coast of Greece. It is renown for its trees and a rap group of the same name.(Think CYPRESS.) Then I thought to myself:
Gee, that might tip off the examiner that I know nothing about the cy pres doctrine. Then the examiner might take a closer look at the first 3 parts of my essay and lord knows I don't want that. Better not be funny then.So I settled for a single sentence saying it didn't apply or some such. Hehe.
Those are my 3 thoughts for today. It wasn't horrible but it wasn't that good either. Have to wait and see how it goes. One thing I learned, I can write essays fast when I don't know much about the answers. I also learned that my right hand is not meant to write for 6 hours a day. It huuuuuurts. Huuuuuurts. Owwwwwww. 'Least tomorrow is multiple choice and not more essays.
Okay, that's today's report. *sigh* One down, two to go!
ADDENDUM: Forgot to mention one other thing of minor amusement. The instructions tell you that when they say it's time, you put your pen or pencil down, stop writing immediately and stand up behind your chair. Then you put your papers back in the envelope and wait for a proctor to come around and collect it. The guy next to me, as the proctor is collecting from our table, is trying to convince her that he needs to add the word "sincerely" to the end of his MPT-letter. I walked away after hearing that. If I'd stayed there I think I might have broke out laughing. [9:07 PM]