Sua SponteMy law school odyssey: the ongoing narrative.
First:
THANK YOU.
Second:
It's done.
It's done.
It's done.
It's over.
"It's over," the proctor told us at noon. "You can cheer now." We all blinked stupidly at her for a few seconds, until B. shouted out: "Way to go, Section 5!" And that did it. We gave ourselves a round of applause.
"I have never felt so bad handing in an exam," R. told me.
"That just sucked," I agreed. I have no idea how it went. Thanks in no small part to the influx of positive energy, at least last night's panic didn't get in my way; still, I haven't a clue how many issues I missed, and have less than no desire to wonder at this point.
"Let's do one last group lunch," suggested J. from my study group.
"Oooh, yeah," I said. "But first let me dump my books."
After each exam, I jettisoned the casebook and supplements from that course in my basement locker. I now went down to reclaim this stack of literature, realizing as I did that I was leaving my locker completely empty. On a whim, I took my lock off and clamped it onto my borrowed-from-husband backpack. If the news comes back bad, I'm prepared...and if it comes back good, I'm prepared. And if it comes back neither, the lock will still be handy come August.
"That book is worth nothing," the bookstore buyback guy told me, looking down his nose at Civil Procedure in California. "I knew it!" I hollered back. He hardly flinched. I was a bit wild-eyed by then, but didn't realize quite *how* wild-eyed until the guy got to my Contracts casebook. "We're not taking this," he told me, handing me back my casebook. "Yes you are," I said, pushing the book back towards him. "No," he insisted, handing it back to me again and nodding towards a large mail cart to our left which contained a goodly number of abandoned casebooks.
"Ah," I said, and took aim. The gusto with which I flung my casebook into the cart prompted S. and I., behind me in line, to giggle. I grinned in some satisfaction, and when the bookstore wouldn't buy my Restatement, I spun around and slam-dunked it into the mail cart. This time S. and I. flinched at the look on my face, which had gone beyond wild-eyed to furious. "Bit of pent-up aggression there?" S. teased me. "You have no idea," I told him.
Everything on my law shelf (minus my Gilberts supplements and Glannon on Civ Pro, which I'm keeping since they could be useful some day), cashed in, amounted to $83. As far as expectation damages go, that's pretty piss-poor. Still, it was money in my pocket as I ventured back out into the astonishing sunlight.
We lunched at Chevy's and toasted with a pitcher of margaritas: "Here's to the best study group in Section 5," I pronounced, "long may we litigate!" We polished off another pitcher before disbanding to go our separate ways, promising to stay in touch over the summer. I still don't think any of them read my blog. That's probably OK.
I meandered down to MUNI, popped in my last token, and got on the N-Judah as usual...except that, instead of heading towards Caltrain, I rode the outbound line. Nearly an hour later, I was crossing a road called La Playa to find myself face to face with the Pacific Ocean.
DANGEROUS WAVES! read a sign.
Don't go in the water, Bill Logan had warned me. It's dangerous at Ocean Beach.
But it wasn't; it was the serenest I'd ever seen the otherwise-misnamed Pacific. Rather than crashing in one after another, the waves faded in and out over each other in no real succession, glassing over large stretches of smooth muddy sand. Ocean-fresh fog veiled the sky and cast a quiet over the scene, much the way falling snow does. The beach was near-deserted, the tide was low. Just me, the birds, the dampered lather of the ocean and a multitude of sand dollars.
Few things are as perfect -- so round, so detailed, so delicate -- as an unbroken sand dollar. I picked up at least a dozen, and there were hundreds more that were broken but still nifty. Several large brown sea gulls watched me flirt with the thin slow-moving waves (the whole sand dollars were more likely to be down by the water than up in the dry sand), standing still and staring at me with mild interest. You look almost like an albatross, I told one of them, but you're not.
I had several miniature bottles of various things alcoholic stowed in the backpack, but wasn't inclined to do shots. Instead, I chose one: a bottle of amaro, Italian for "bitter." Bitter it was, but textured. So was law school. So was this year. I polished off the bottle and tasted the taste in my mouth for another twenty minutes. These things take time to wear off.
On the train home, for closure, I queued up The Swan. I did this for a whole damned year, I thought silently as the sunlit bay flashed by outside the windows (over on the bay side of the peninsula, it was still astonishingly sunny), and now it's over.
It's over.
It's over.
This should sink in soon.