If I Only Had A Brain

As I sit here at 3:17 AM, I have decided that law school finals would be much, much easier if I only had a brain. I took my third final last night and it, like the others, was no cake walk. Unfortunately, things have not quite gone the way I had hoped this round. I would venture to say that it has been more taxing this semester than it was last year when Hayley was pregnant!

I took my first final last week. I was as prepared as I was going to be. The final was Ethics. The test was 40 short answer giving hypothetical situations that we "discussed" in class (i.e. the professor read a situation from the book, said the rules didn't help us much, and then stated that the situation wouldn't arise half the time in real life). I started the computer program that is used to type the exam. Unfortunately, it decided it didn't want to work. It gave me an error message and sent my computer into a loop where it restarted, showed the error message, shut down, and restarted. Time to grab the pencil and get writing! The problem is, I don't write fast.

I was pretty happy that my second final wasn't taken on the computer. After the debacle in the first final, I didn't want to be worrying about computer problems. Unfortunately, I had other problems to worry about. In my mind, the professor messed up the fact pattern to the biggest problem on the exam. He gave this long scenario about a guy name Jackson Michaels that created a will. The exam said that the will was drafted and signed by Jackson and witnessed by two others. He then said "after Howard signed the will, it was taken to two other individuals to sign as witnesses to validate the will". I hit panic mode. Who the hell is Howard? And what happened to the first two witnesses? Didn't they sign? This made quite the different in the problem. If they did sign, everything passed under the will. If they didn't, it passed by state law. Since you can't ask the professor for clarification during the exam (they are not in the room; they aren't even supposed to be in the building), I took a guess on just what the heck the professor meant. Cross your fingers!

And then there's last night. Here's where I had my scarecrow moment. Before I went downtown to take the exam, I tested the computer software to make sure it worked. At first it didn't. But then I fiddled with it and got it to work. We're good to go.

I mentioned to Hayley on the way downtown that I wasn't completely with it. I'm tired. No, I'm exhausted. Physically and mentally exhausted. Here's some context. A song came on the radio (it was the 4 o'clock flashback). I said, "man, this sounds like Soul Asylum". After the song was over, the DJ said it was Soul Asylum and I got pissed. I was like, "man, I thought I nailed that one. I was sure I had it right". After 10 seconds I realized that I was right. I had said Soul Asylum.

Unfortunately, this spaciness carried over to the final (it was Corporations). I had everything set up and ready to go. I started the software, selected the Agency and Partnerships file, and entered the password that was given by the proctor.

Invalid password.

What? You've got to be kidding me. Are you serious? Maybe I typed it wrong. Let's try again.

Invalid password.

At this point, the blood is boiling. I'm hating ExamSoft and their stupid program that works for everyone but me. I asked the proctor if the password was correct and she said it was. Everyone else in the classroom said it was correct and was working for them.

Time to bust out the pen!

Here were the thoughts running through my head the first 5 minutes of the exam (note this has been cleaned up...A LOT): "Oh man, someone at ExamSoft is going to have quite the bad day tomorrow. They're going to get a chewin'. Brian, get back to the exam. Seriously, what the hell kind of program is this?!?!?! It doesn't even work! I'm 0-2. Brian, get back to the exam. Wait until I tell Hayley, she's going to be pissed too! And on my daughter's birthday! Brian, get back to the exam. What if ExamSoft can't fix it? I can't be writing my exam for Moore's class tomorrow. Brian, get back to the exam. I'm tired of this crap. Brian, get back to the exam."

Here's the problem. I'm a slow reader, writer, talker, and story-teller (can you tell???). I figure I'm at a distinct disadvantage when taking an exam that everyone else can type because they can type much, much faster than I can write. This generally means they get more information down which yields the possibility for more points. Yeah, I wrote 11 double-spaced pages yesterday, but I could have written much, much more. And what pisses me off most is that the exam wasn't that bad. I was more prepared than I thought and I feel that I could have done really well. But alas.

So as I get out of the exam all pissed off, I get in the car and listen to how much fun my baby girl had at the Children's Museum yesterday. I don't have time to detail what all she did, but she supposedly had a great time. And it made me feel so much better. Who cares about the exam.

Then Hayley asked me how it went. And I got angry again. I was explaining to her what happened and I said, "The software messed up again. I went in, clicked on the drop-down box, selected the Agency & Partn...holy sh*t."

To anyone that has been reading this, they will have noticed that I said last night's exam was Corporations. I also said earlier that I selected the Agency & Partnerships exam file. No wonder the frickin' password didn't work. I'm a dufus and I picked the wrong file. If I only had a brain, I would have someone else to blame this on. But I must take the hit for being an idiot this time around.