Day 3 of BarBri, and I still kind of like it so far. The lecturers have been pretty entertaining, at any rate. And there's been the running theme of them reassuring us that mediocrity is ok. In fact, it's better than ok - it's the only way you'll pass the damn test.
Today they gave us a brief overview of NY essay writing and then some tips on how to do the MPT part of the test (Multistate Practice Test, where they give us some information and some law and expect us to produce a lawyerly document in 90 minutes). I spent the time deciding that the MPT lecturer, Prof. Ruescher from St. John's, probably grew up in the Bronx, or maybe Yonkers. As opposed to, say, Queens or Brooklyn, etc. At first I was a little thrown because he doesn't sound quite like my dad, who in my mind has a prototypical Bronx accent (although he has been in NJ for 35 years, so perhaps it's less definitive than I've thought), since their long "o's" were a little different. But their long "i's" were very much the same. It's a very distinctive "i", and a little hard to describe (much less imitate), but, basically, when my dad says things like the word "buy," you can kind of hear the "u".
Now, you may well be wondering what all this has to do with the MPT, but then again you probably should be wondering what the MPT (or the whole bar exam) has to do with anything anyway. (You're probably much more likely to figure out the former than the latter...)