I've been telling all my friends today:

You know, over the weekend, I had a wonderful dream. You were in it. I dreamt we graduated from law school. There was a graduation ceremony. It was a great ceremony, it was over in under an hour; we all wore caps and gowns and got hooded by Dean Closius. They took our pictures. We laughed. We cried. We took pictures.

Afterwards, family and friends gathered for lunch. We ate. We drank. We celebrated.

And yet...it was either a dream, or we're the biggest idiots in the world, because here we are, back in the law school we ostensibly just graduated from at 8:30 on a Monday morning.

No, wait. That wasn't a dream at all. In fact, I did graduate from law school, and in fact, there I was, at 8:30 on a Monday morning, in the University of Toledo College of Law. How bizarre!

And this, I am told, is the beginning of a journey which will hopefully conclude with my becoming a lawyer. The defining moment of said journey will be 78 days from today, when the Ohio bar examination starts. I figured a chronicle of this journey would be somewhat interesting to someone, if to no one else than to me. It may also explain to friends who will visit who are not fellow travelers on this journey, "Where the hell is Michael, and why the hell is he so crabby when we find him?" I'm not saying I'm going to be crabby, but then again, I've got seventy-eight days of studying for a three day test I'll be doing here. What would your mood be like?

Anyway. There are two major classes offered for taking the bar exam, PMBR and BarBri. I'll explain the functions of these classes in a later post more in depth in a later post, but for now, suffice it to say, PMBR is dedicated to the 200 (yes, 200) multiple choice questions I will answer. The class runs from Monday to Saturday, 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM, and some genius decided it needed to start today, two days after graduation.

Sound hellish? It is, and it was, and it was quite literally. The room we entered this morning was not warm, it was hot. While I love the University of Toledo College of Law dearly, I'd like to find the leprechaun, gnome, troll or convict who runs the heating/ac system and shake him. A few weeks before exams, the heat was on in the whole building and it was 75 degrees outside. This was most unpleasant. Today, the saunalike conditions were limited only to Room 1013, which was the room (of course) we were in. I apologize for the lengthy discussion of the temperature, but you would be complaining, too.

The proctor, a completely inoffensive young man in a completely uncomfortable looking white shirt and khaki pants, told us all to begin, and we started in on fifty questions about criminal law. I found myself sitting next to Jeremy Levy, a friend of mine. A few years ago, Jeremy and I were both on the same team for the oral argument competition at our school, and we captured the top prize. Jeremy's a good guy.

The exam took me about an hour to complete, and I walked out of the oven of Room 1013, and outside, into a much more hospitable climate. The answers to the exam were in the back of our books, so I was able to self-grade . I was alarmed to discover I got twenty questions out of fifty right. Visions of other careers in other fields once again danced in my head. (It has, after all, been two years since we dealt with criminal law or any of the first-year subjects taught on the bar exam.)

I spent some time grading my answers and reading the explanations for the ones I got wrong, then headed up to the computer lab to check my email. By noon, it was time to return to Room 1013 and meet (virtually, at least) Robert Feinberg, the founder of PMBR and, I believe, an aspiring singer. But for now, I'm going to check out and head to the new Borders, so more on the eccentric Mr. Feinberg later...