Like a fugitive who just quit running you found out there's no escape

Fuck you, new version of Microsoft Word.

I bought a new laptop at the end of the school year, since the P.O.S. the school issued me was on its last legs and I wanted something reliable to take the CBX on. Anyways, it came with Vista and the newest version of word. I had all of my outlines typed up and ready to go, and just printed them all out in the business center in my building. Turns out that the option to make the docs Word 2003 compatible (which I need in order to print from the computer downstairs) does nasty things to the formatting of the outlines. I had spent a considerable amount of time making sure all of my spacing was set out the way I wanted it - major subject headings on a new page - that sort of thing. After all 200+ pages had printed, I flipped through them and found out how fucked up they were.

Most people would be somewhat disgruntled by this, but I have some sort of OCD when it comes to my outlines. For law school, all of my outlines had to be perfect. They typically were color coded and I kept them in pristine condition. One night during finals, a waitress at Denny's spilt a drop of coffee on one of them - and my friends thought I was going to have a heart attack/shoot the waitress. (Hmmm.... adequate provocation to justify a reduction in the charge to voluntary manslaughter? No--- that's judged by a reasonable person standard - and the OCD pretty much negates that.) So, needless to say I'm debating going through the outlines and reformatting them, paying a small fortune to print them out at Kinkos on a newer version of Word, or buying a printer. Clearly, it's not going to be possible for me to keep them in their current condition.

On a happier note - I'm all over the released questions - much easier than the AQs, and more straightforward. BarBri has had the unfortunate effect of making me think that the most obvious answer is wrong, because they test on the exceptions to the expceptions. The released questions, however, don't do this. I'm also happier with my performance on these - somewhere between 79 and 94 percent on the questions depending on the subject. So that's good.

A comment on the last post referred to the PTs. Honestly, I don't think I'm going to do any of them. The one I did for the turn-in for BarBri was enough for me to realize I don't need to focus any energy on those things to do well. The random essays, on the other hand, need more work. Especially in the specific distinctions questions. So I'll continue to try to work on that, keep up with the MBEs, and try not to stress out.

Speaking of stress - I know we can take bathroom breaks during the exam, but can we go outside to smoke? I'm fine on my timing issues for the MBE, and the 5 minute break would be better spent filling my lungs with cancer inducing agents than urinating.

Tomorrow is Motivation Monday again. The third to the last one before the exam. It also starts the 2 week crunch time period. I think there's a good chance I'll get my act together now - I couldn't study worth shit until about 2 weeks before finals during school, then busted ass until exams were over. Too bad there isn't a 24 Denny's that allows smoking around LA - or in the state of California for that matter. Then again, the waitresses there suck.