We got our practice essays back. I got a 5 (out of 10). From what I hear, that's a decent score. I think you can pass the bar with 5's on your essays. As I get more familiar with the material I might be able to do a little bit better, but I think I did pretty well on format. For these essays IRAC is very important. Maybe even more important than in law school. I think I used to struggle with it a little, but my time in Germany really helped develop that skill.
Anyway, today was day 1 of Con Law. The lecturer was Prof. Chemerinsky. At first I was looking forward to it because he's very esteemed in the subject matter, and I'd heard he was an interesting lecturer. I wish I hadn't heard that - it just served to raise my hopes too high. And while he is indeed very knowledgeable and generally very organized as a lecturer, he managed to make a complete mess out of privileges and immunities, which is already very confusing. Fortunately his materials included a handy chart, and I *think* I can distill the essense of what I need to know from the chaos, but that section was not a high point of the day.