I'm officially 55.5% evil

But after next semester, I'll be 66.6% evil, and you can't get any more evil than that. ;)

Wow, this whole law school thing doesn't get any easier. You would think after 2.5 years, I would have cracked the code by now, but every semester it's the same. I think I allow myself enough time to study, so much so that I let myself screw around posting blog posts or doing the [shudder] Facebook thing (I did it just to take the Heroes quiz. Really!). Then on the day of the exam, I do some CALI exercises (computer-aided law instruction) and I find out I really don't know what I should know. I invariably spend a full day preparing an outline and tabbing the snot out of it until it looks like it's exploding with technicolor post-its, only to find out that it was too cumbersome to use when scrambling to answer the questions (and yes, even on a four-hour exam, you scramble the whole four hours). At the end of it all, I spend a month running through exam questions in my head, answering them in my sleep (usually with different, better answers than what I gave on the exam), growing ever more impatient and pessimistic. I vow that next semester will be different; that I'll review each week and hone my outline to a finely crafted masterpiece of legal precision, and that come test time, I'll walk out of the exam without an iota of doubt as to my superior performance. These are the fantasies of a law student.

But for now, I'm actually doing pretty good with the post-test regret. Christmas is almost here, the kids are excited, and I am quickly trading the "damn, I shoulda..." for "damn, I'm glad it's over." My shopping is almost done, work is, well, work, and I'm looking forward to reading a book for fun (God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World, by Walter Mead), cleaning out the basement and maybe starting on the build-out of my office. These are the fantasies of a 40-something, married father of two law student on Christmas break.