I set my alarm for 5:25 in the morning, and when it went off, I was annoyed. Now I understand why toddlers scream and throw temper tantrums when they're tired. As I was up and moving around in my exhaustion, it was actually physically painful. My body insisted that it wasn't quite 4:30 in the morning, and it wanted to be asleep.
When I booked my hotel, the website said that it was 5 blocks from the convention center. Well, just in case you ever need to know, 5 blocks is way longer in Phoenix than it is in any city in the Bay Area. Where I come from, a 5 block walk will take 3-5 minutes, maybe as long as 7 if all of the lights are red. Yeah...my hotel is a 20 minute walk from the convention center. Oops.
I arrived around 6:25 (I was supposed to be there at 6:15), and my tardiness was no problem. They didn't even let us in the building until 7. And all of that stuff about Arizona being hot - yeah, doesn't apply first thing in the morning in February. It was freezing! At least I had a jacket. I chatted with a few people, and then we went inside.
The security guards were much friendlier than when I took the CA bar, though that could just be related to the fact that in CA I took it in downtown Oakland. However, we did have to go through a metal detector. (There was no metal detector in CA.) I was in my seat by 7:15, which left me an hour to engage in silent meditation or something.
I was totally calm about the whole thing, but I guess I looked freaked out or something, because the proctor tried to cheer me up and tell me that the bar exam really isn't all that bad. I made some noncommittal polite response while thinking to myself that I'm a wisened and grizzled (and slightly wounded) veteran of the bar exam wars, and I know exactly how bad it is.
At 8:15, we began the laptop check. There were tech support people present, which made me feel better about the software being kind of buggy. (It's different software than I used in CA, and CA had a policy of "too bad, so sad" for computer problems.) The software worked fine for me, so I didn't need tech support. (The software gave me trouble in the practice exams, so I'm glad it worked for the real thing.)
The morning session began at 9:00. The session consisted of 6 essays to be done in 3 hours. I felt really good about two of them, adequate about 3 of them, and totally lost on one of them. All in all, that's a pretty good ratio in my book. When I finished, I went to Starbucks to get some lunch. I only had an hour break, and my choices were Starbucks or several sit-down restaurants. There's not much available by the convention center. I didn't want to take the chance of a sit-down restaurant due to the time constraint.
After lunch, I went back to the convention center, and I chatted with a few more people. Then we were let back inside for the afternoon session. The afternoon session consisted of two performance tests (fake case files with fake cases and laws, where we have to write a memo or court brief). I was worried about having enough time, but I did fine. I feel really good about the performance tests.
Then I trudged back to my hotel. The bar exam prohibits flip flops and hard-soled shoes, so I had to wear loafers. Loafers are terrible to walk in, and now I have blisters on the back of my feet. I'm going to go out in search of some moleskin this evening.
I got back to my hotel and ate leftover pizza for dinner. Then I spent some time getting caught up on Facebook. I'm going to spend the rest of the evening doing totally mindless things and then I'll go to bed early.
Tomorrow is the multiple choice portion, which is my strongest suit. Halfway there!
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