I found out Friday that I passed the Texas bar exam. I get sworn in on Monday.
For those of you who are unaware, the entire bar exam process was a complete nightmare this year. Husband and I left Massachusetts a month earlier than initially planned after my final semester of law school went all online, and we quarantined with some family until we were able to rent a house of our own.
They cancelled the July bar exam less than a month before it was supposed to take place and offered either an in-person exam in September in hotel rooms (yuck) or an all-online exam with untested software in October. I chose the October exam for reasons explained below. The initial software they had us using royally messed up shortly before Florida's initial attempt at an online bar exam in August and literally every state using the software backed out of its contract. It was bad. There were data breaches, computer crashes, etc that most of us assumed were connected with the software. A second exam software company had already declared that this scale of an exam (because many other states, including the two largest - California and New York - were all set to use the same software at the exact same time in October) was impossible and backed out. So we were all stuck with this last exam company. We ended up buying a new laptop just to ensure that my computer wouldn't overheat and that I could protect our data during the exam.
I started my first full-time law-related job in August and balanced continued study from August to the exam. Mind you, bar prep programs are designed to be completed by studying full time for 8 to 10 weeks. I ended up studying for about 21 weeks and had to be careful to pace myself toward the end to prevent burnout and not run out of study materials. Fortunately we're in a nice house with plenty of rooms and I am working from home.
My mother contracted COVID in September and was hospitalized for 4.5/5 days with double pneumonia. My father, brother, and sister-in-law also all contracted COVID though they only had mild symptoms. All are well now, but it was a scary few days. I took a test, but I was thankfully negative for COVID.
Finally, I have been pregnant this whole dang time. My lil bean was the size of a sesame seed when I started studying and will be nearly the size of a head of romaine lettuce (according to my app) by the time I am sworn in. She's the reason I elected to go with the untested online bar exam and avoid an in-person exam in a hotel, and she and I did it. This entire process has been total bananas, but we did it.
Fin.
For those of you who are unaware, the entire bar exam process was a complete nightmare this year. Husband and I left Massachusetts a month earlier than initially planned after my final semester of law school went all online, and we quarantined with some family until we were able to rent a house of our own.
They cancelled the July bar exam less than a month before it was supposed to take place and offered either an in-person exam in September in hotel rooms (yuck) or an all-online exam with untested software in October. I chose the October exam for reasons explained below. The initial software they had us using royally messed up shortly before Florida's initial attempt at an online bar exam in August and literally every state using the software backed out of its contract. It was bad. There were data breaches, computer crashes, etc that most of us assumed were connected with the software. A second exam software company had already declared that this scale of an exam (because many other states, including the two largest - California and New York - were all set to use the same software at the exact same time in October) was impossible and backed out. So we were all stuck with this last exam company. We ended up buying a new laptop just to ensure that my computer wouldn't overheat and that I could protect our data during the exam.
I started my first full-time law-related job in August and balanced continued study from August to the exam. Mind you, bar prep programs are designed to be completed by studying full time for 8 to 10 weeks. I ended up studying for about 21 weeks and had to be careful to pace myself toward the end to prevent burnout and not run out of study materials. Fortunately we're in a nice house with plenty of rooms and I am working from home.
My mother contracted COVID in September and was hospitalized for 4.5/5 days with double pneumonia. My father, brother, and sister-in-law also all contracted COVID though they only had mild symptoms. All are well now, but it was a scary few days. I took a test, but I was thankfully negative for COVID.
Finally, I have been pregnant this whole dang time. My lil bean was the size of a sesame seed when I started studying and will be nearly the size of a head of romaine lettuce (according to my app) by the time I am sworn in. She's the reason I elected to go with the untested online bar exam and avoid an in-person exam in a hotel, and she and I did it. This entire process has been total bananas, but we did it.
Fin.
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