Sua SponteMy law school odyssey: the ongoing narrative.
*sigh*
The glee kind of never materialized.
I feel hazed, hosed, hung out to dry in the midst of the still-pouring rain (so much for a drought in the Bay Area this year). I went charging through the Crim exam as best I could, spotting all the issues that were to be spotted in a ninety-minute timespan, discoursing on the policy of encouraging the consumption of alcohol vs. severely punishing the harm done by the intoxicated, and coming up with four different arguments as to why acquitting battered women of murder does not constitute issuing victims of abuse "a license to kill." But then I hit the last corollary to the last question: whether it was possible to harmonize favoring a defense for battered women who kill their abusers with a blanket opposition to the death penalty.
As many times as I reread that sentence, I couldn't see the contradiction.
Thought had by me, right at that moment, the only thought of any weight that I managed to think throughout the exam:
I have hit the wall.
I had twenty minutes left in the exam and was not going down without a fight. I finally came up with two plausible arguments for why this might even represent a contradiction (please don't suggest any more; it's already 100% in violation of personal credo that I'm even discussing the exam this much), shot them both down, finished typing within seconds of the proctor calling time, and found that my legs were shaking uncontrollably as I left the room. Joe Cocker jangled in my ears like a knell. I stumbled over to the bookstore, sold back my Torts and Crim casebooks, and bought casebooks for Property and Employment Discrimination next semester. Then I hurried up to the quiet third floor, called my husband, and did my best to talk it out. Plenty of tears in my eyes, very few that actually fell. I needed a good cry, and still do, I think.
I should be thankful that I didn't hit the wall until twenty minutes from the end of my last exam. I should be thankful that I still managed to choke out something resembling a coherent answer. I should be thankful for my husband's coaching, for lunch with wonderful Patrick who hugged me without reserve, for my mother's common sense over the phone on the train home: "You do your best and t' heck wit'em!"
I am thankful for these things. I am thankful for all of the prayers and waves that everyone sent, and I am particularly thankful that the academic dean saw me in a semi-stupor on the third floor and directed me down to the 1L party on the second, where Ali from the cafeteria plied me with a plastic cup of Charles Shaw cabernet. "Guess what!" S. squealed to me as I approached a table populated by friends. "G. bought an engagement ring!!"
Sure enough, he intended to propose to his longtime girlfriend on the day after Christmas, while they vacationed together in Maui. He took my hand to get a better look at my own engagement ring and joked "See, look at this huge motherf*cker." "It's one carat," I responded with a grin. "So's the one I got her," said G., "and if she says no you'll see it on eBay."
Heading back to the bar for a refill on the cabernet, I passed one of the buffet tables and noticed some familiar small red berries garnishing a tray of sandwiches. A student I didn't know was collecting them into a pile on her plate. "I love pomegranate seeds," she told me, unbidden. "They're, like, my favorite things in the whole world." "Mine too!" I squealed back, and suddenly found myself in a giddy conversation with a complete stranger on the Zen of pomegranate study breaks and the best way to protect one's clothing from juicy projectiles. I didn't even actually get any of the pomegranate seeds off the tray. It didn't matter. G. was getting engaged, pomegranates were wonderful, and exams were over.