urrrrggghhh

Nauseous.

K. decided that we needed to stop on our way up to The City to pick up some munchies from Whole Foods. ("We", lately, consists of a carpool of K., C., me, and K.'s large dog, who comes along for the ride.) We snagged the standard hummus, sesame blue corn chips, rice crackers, Ry Krisp and guacamole, along with a bottle of lemonade for good measure, then ducked into Peet's Coffee for a caffeine spike. C. and I both ordered chai; I probably should have paid better attention when C. took a sip of hers and immediately threw the rest away. "That's awful," she said. "Bitter. The soy milk must be bad or something."

I took a sip of mine, in which I had forgotten to request soy milk, and had the same problem. "It's not the milk, it's the tea," I said. "It's just nasty." But instead of doing the smart thing -- kissing my $3 goodbye and just tossing the drink -- I added some honey and Sugar in the Raw to cut the bitterness, then wound up drinking the entire cup. And now I'm nauseous as heck. Maybe I'll take a study break in an hour or so and toss my cookies. It wouldn't be inappropriate.

The caffeine turned out to be necessary, though: we spent our entire three-hour study group session on the one massive four-part issue spotter from last year's Property exam. These things are not for the faint of heart; Professor Property has all but admitted that they're designed to trigger panic attacks. "I make my exams difficult," she said, "but I grade them generously." Hopefully the latter is as true as the former. We'll have to take her word for it.

Two people did not survive until the end of the study group session. L. succumbed to the panic while we were puzzling through the ambiguous conveyance analysis: "I just need to get back into my own space," she said without confidence as she packed up and left. We could all identify. S. toughed it out through the takings section, but finally hit the wall as D. and I argued over the test for abolition of a core property right. "I'm so sorry I'm so lame today," she stammered. "I'm so sorry." She was not lame today, we told her; she went home anyway. Once the fear infects you, there's nothing you can do but detox.

Fortunately the fear did not infect me. I just need to practice, practice, practice Property exams. These five-page, four-part, nasty rambling fact patterns are fundamentally formulaic once you get used to them. There's always a taking, always an adverse possession issue, always an ambiguous conveyance whose analysis involves both the RAP and a covenant. There are a finite number of rules that we've covered. If I can get them all to fit together, get my time spent issue-spotting down under a half hour, it will help. And Professor Property's policy questions all have a "correct" answer; it's simply a matter of making the law fit it, which should be an entertaining exercise in contrarianism for me -- but eminently doable, with practice.

Practice.

Off to practice.

thus spake /jca @ May 3, 2003 03:07 PM