40 Year Old Law Student

So, it’s the day after LSAT again for me. And you’re here because you’re wondering how other people are feeling the day after their October 1st LSAT test?

I feel fine. Better than fine. A little hungover.

As I mentioned yesterday, after the test, I went to see 50/50. It was pretty much what I was hoping for. The movie was a comedy about a living with cancer, so you know there would be sadness and anguish over how some people were dealt the unfair life cards, but there was much laughter too. I’m not trying to promote: instead of thinking about LSATs, think about cancer. Although, it does help to illustrate that LSAT is not the worst thing on planet. However good or bad you did, your life is not over. Laugh a little already. And being that it’s October, it’s time to focus on law school applications anyhow.

I just bought some new heels in preparation for law school, because at 35 I feel it’s time I own heels that doesn’t conjure images of woman gyrating to the tunes of “I Wanna F*ck You Like An Animal” when I strut in them. My other shoes are various sports gear: hiking boots, running shoes, water shoes, mountaineering boots, snowboarding boots, biking shoes, etc. I don’t think any of them would fair any better in a courtroom setting.

While I was writing yesterday, I put on the heels to break them in a bit. If I thought taking the last LSAT was painful, breaking in new heels made it seem delightful. As a person most comfortable in hiking boots, I’m rarely a picture of poise and grace in heels. In new leather heels that need to be stretched out, I look like a baby giraffe trying to stand for the first time, with a lot less “awwww” factor and a lot more “holy hell, she is about to trip and break her neck” factor. It’s not even possible to fool myself into thinking I look graceful, because when the boyfriend is around, he holds one of my hands tightly while circling his free arm in front of me, like he’s getting ready to catch me.

He’s setting me up to fail as a lawyer, because I can’t exactly have him follow me around trying to catch me all the time. However, I can maybe hire a team of midgets to follow me around and catch me if I trip. Then, maybe instead of admitting I can’t walk worth shit in my heels, I can pretend like I’m doing an impromptu body surfing whenever I trip. If there are other lawyer types looking, I can be all like, “Yeah, I got to body surf on my midget posse, what’d you got? Nothing. I win!”

October 1, 2011 LSAT just taken. I honestly don’t know how well I did. The logic games felt harder…no, just more time consuming than others. I think I did reasonably well in logical reasoning and reading comp is the evil that I try not to dwell too much on.

This is all the time I plan to spend thinking about the LSAT for today.

For the rest of the day, I plan to first watch 50/50 because I figure a comedy inspired by a true story about fighting cancer might give me some perspective, especially on how much popcorn I can stuff my face with in one sitting.

Then after that I have a housewarming and birthday party to attend, where I plan on drinking copious amounts of vodka to loosen up my back. I don’t know what it is about sitting for hours hunched over a test that makes my back and neck tense up for DAYS after, but I’m hopeful alcohol will be a quick remedy.

Last time I was drunk, I decided to show my boyfriend how awesomely flexible I’d become (thank you, booze) by scratching my head with my toes. He acted unimpressed but I thought he might be jealous, so I tried to scratch his head with my toes. He screamed, “That’s gross! What is wrong with you? You should go to bed because you are obviously drunk.” I told him, other men might not complain so much about a partner that is *wink wink* flexible. Also in some parts of the world, having an extra limb to help with lice picking might be a gift.

While I know I can just as easily solve my problem by scheduling a chiropractic appointment right after every long test, I am also deathly afraid of the neck cracking that chiropractors seem to love. Soon as my chiropractor touches my head and tells me to relax, my entire body tenses up so hard as to enable me to win all planking contests. Then comes the neck cracking sound that would normally indicate someone has just died if heard in a movie.

If I’m going to schedule my own death, it damned well not be right after I’ve spent all that time studying for and taking a test.

Also.

Love vodka.

October 1st is the next LSAT test date.

I knew since I saw my last test scores back in June that I would be retaking the test. Of course this meant, I should have registered for the next test right away, since I knew when and where I wanted to take the test. Should.

Of course since I was so busy studying for the retake *cough* I forgot to register for the test until the very last minute. I’m going with that excuse and no one can get me to admit otherwise. By the time I got around to registering, my test center of choice (couple blocks from my condo) was full. I was dumbfounded for a moment. Seattle University wasn’t that small. Couldn’t they just add another chair for me? I stared at the screen for a long time before sighing heavily, like I just discovered I have an ugly belly button. Not quite the end of the world, but not ideal either. I clicked on University of Washington for test center choice even though I would rather not retake then to have to fight traffic to get to UW, then fight for parking, and then fight off rabid squirrels all the way across the giant campus. It’s a lot of fighting just to take a test. I don’t know if I have time to train for the fights and the test.

Right after I registered, I wrote to LSACInfo and asked them if someone happened to be gravely ill and canceled at SU (I thought about killing someone for the spot, but then they wouldn’t be able to cancel their registration then), could they switch me over. Their response was:

“You will need to monitor the website to see if a spot opens up at that center.”

Which said a couple things to me. First, they are condoning and maybe even encouraging any poisoning I plan to do. It would definitely keep with the spirit of good old fashion competition, with the test being on a bell curve and all. Second, their website, even though it feels completely archaic like it was designed by one of the five COBOL programmers left in the world who didn’t have much to do after the Y2K scare and they designed it with the intention that it’s navigated completely by UNIX text commands (which is one of the main reason why they are okay with a website that is a clunky mess), is actually capable of useful functionality. That is, the website knows, soon as a spot opens up at a center, it will smartly unclose that center.

For the next week and a half, I checked the LSAC site more obsessively than a stay-at-home mom checking her Facebook account. I really didn’t want to have a showdown with aggressive squirrels, especially not at 8 in the morning. Then one day, it happened. SU became a limit availability test center choice. It ended up costing me another $35 (seriously? 35!? it’s not like someone had to touch paperwork to make that happen, it’s all computer clicks), but I got my test center of choice.

This is good because looking up “how to fend off squirrels” resulted in things like, get an attack dog and a bb gun. While both sounds like fun, I don’t know if they will fit in my gallon sized ziplock bag.

I did extensive mountaineering training the last two days so I woke up with all kinds of muscle tweaks and pain. Despite the body aches, I felt pretty good. I woke up and had breakfast at my new dinner table at my new condo celebrating the fact that I survived the weekend’s grueling exercise.

I got ready, packed my ziplock baggie of stuff and walked to the test site which was a couple blocks from my condo. There were quite a few Steven Klein’s classmates there. We talked about bringing in a banner for our group during our break. Maybe we could have just made up our own gang signs and just threw them up randomly to psyche out other people.

How did I do? I honestly think at worst, I did average and at best probably 158. My absolute worst section was the experimental section, which was the first section I did. I was very happy to not have stressed over that section when it confused the hell out of me.

Steven Klein has a gathering tonight to discuss post testing strategy, but I really just don’t want to think about that test anymore for now. It’s a sigh of relief that the test is over with and I can stop stressing over that and start planning my application process. I need a drink.