Today is the first day of the rest of your life

I awoke at 6:30 this morning in order to leave my downtown apartment by 7:30 to ensure that I made it to BarBri by 9:00 - traffic was bad, but tolerable, and I made it there in about 55 minutes. After tracking down the one girl I knew from my summer class that was in the same session, I sat down to take in the Intro day at BarBri.

So far it's been pretty much what I expected. They made a point to tell us to actually do the assignments they give us, to not use the "big" books unless we need help clarifying something, as was pointed out in the comments yesterday, and there were a number of jokes that fell flat. The lecturers also made a few digs on PMBR - though not by name - telling us NOT to do 50 MBEs a day (in fact, they want us to take about 10 days off from doing them at all while they go through the essay portions). I'm still on the fence with this one - although I didn't take PMBR I bought all of the CDs and had planned on doing 50 MBEs per day. I guess it will all come down to how much time I have and my motivation to keep studying into the wee hours of the morning.

Another difference from the Bar Prep books I've read regarding the MBEs is the time vs. untimed approach. BarBri seems to want us to spend the 1 minute 48 seconds per question for the full amount of questions we're doing, then check our answers. The other book I read suggested 1 or 2 questions at a time, then read the answers, then increasing the number of questions before answer review later on. As my ability to retain information is horrible, I'll probably do the non-BarBri method for awhile.

The schedule for class and review looks pretty intense. I'm happy with the level of detail on the schedule - how many questions, what subjects, etc. Without a forced scheduled I'm sure I'd fall behind.

Class got out after about 2 hours, so I left and went home and was able to get my car towed to a mechanic. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the repairs won't suck up the rest of my bar stipend. I had planned on a new car in January or so, after I knew for sure that I passed the bar so my job wouldn't be in jeopardy, but worst-case scenario I'll be shopping for a new car this weekend.

Tomorrow the man himself - Chemerinsky - will be doing our Con Law lecture. I'm looking forward to it in a sick sort of way.

Now - off to the starbucks across the street to begin officially studying for the CBX. Here goes nothing.