dog sleds and bar exams

I took the day yesterday to be a tourist in San Francisco, with a particular aim in mind.  In spite of reading thousands of pages of case books over the past four years, I still find that one of the things I do at a break is to tear through a few books for pleasure.  Such an appetite must be fed.  So I went walkabout in search of some independent bookstores, of which SF has quite a supply.

As a result of the day, along with a new blister and some sore muscles, I have several new (old) books.  I'm reading one named 'Sledge' by Martin Lindsay, the account of the first British trans-Greenland expedition in 1934.  The story is one of day after day of unrelenting hard work, boredom beyond belief, and never enough food, never really getting rested.  Ok, I know this is a stretch, but I found myself thinking about law school.  It's not that I was ever underfed during this four year stretch but there are some things to find in common, if you squint so that everything is blurry, and turn off the lights.  Then it all looks like the same thing.

What I would say is that it seems there is a certain satisfaction in attempting something very difficult, and in accomplishing it.  Even though at times during the actual doing of it, you lose sight of the overall purpose and see no reason to keep moving forward other than the fear of being looked on as a quitter, or of feeling about yourself that you must not be up to the challenge- still after the journey is done, you feel such a sense of completion, of knowing you have met the hard thing face on.  Sure, there is probably some self-righteousness in that mix, but it still serves to fuel the next big thing.  Because of course there must be the next big thing.

You wonder why I'm reading this book instead of studying for the bar- well I confess to being a few days behind schedule on that count.  I had hoped to return home on Monday night and commence a two hour per day MBE schedule immediately.  But it has not yet happened, and I'm hoping that my sense of timing and rhythm is not self-delusion.  I confess to feeling uncertain how to proceed without the Barbri schedule as a guide, and to having a list of things still incomplete that I had hoped to have done before commencing.  But I know that if I do not start by Monday, I will begin to be very anxious.  So start I must.  Just after I read the rest of this book.