As the bar exam got nearer and nearer, I kept thinking about the Monty Python Architect Sketch. In this sketch John Cleese's character describes how the tenants are brought in and "carried along the corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort, past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes, towards the rotating knives." Michael Palin's character then points out that they were really looking for a block of flats, and not an abattoir, but it's the imagery of gently being carried along and carried along nice and easy... until inevitably arriving at the machinery of slaughter that seems to have described my life in recent weeks...
Anyway, here I am in the abattoirSacramento at the end of Day 1 of the bar exam. I wasn't going to blog about the test until it was done but I'm so incredibly BORED that I will anyway. Everything about the test is boring. The studying is boring, the waiting for the exam room to open is boring, the wait for them to give out the exams is boring, the wait for them to pick up the exams is boring, lunch is boring, the exam itself is boring, even writing about it all afterwards is boring. There's three days of all this boringness (plus yesterday was pretty boring too), which basically involves me doing absolutely nothing constructive with my life for 72 hours, except for the 18 hours of immense mental exertion three hours at a time (if you can call that a constructive use of my time, which I doubt you can).
I am glad though that I picked Sacramento as the location for doing this. It's good to get away from everything and just focus on what's before me. (Of course, that's why I'm so bored, because there's nothing else to do but focus on the damn test.) Downtown Sacramento is also fairly pleasant, even in the rain, and parking isn't a problem. The exam room at the convention center is ok - not quite as nice as the room where I took the test in Albany (which was really pretty quiet), but nicer than the one in Secaucus, which was cavernous. It's loud here when people move their chairs, but it's not all that crowded. And, oddly, it seems like lots of people who signed up for the test have not attended. In my immediate vicinity I counted at least six places where the person who was to be sitting there never showed up.
Meanwhile my Motel6 turned out to be a good choice. It costs only a fraction of what the major hotel recommended by the Cal bar website charges, yet it's only a mile or so away by surface streets so getting to and from the test center is not too stressful. And it's in a neighborhood with shops and restaurants and supermarkets so at least I can eat decently. Which is really the only thing I'm doing while I'm not taking the test, because did I mention it's boring?