Some Barbri Characters

So I sit in the front row by habit, possibly why I didn't recognize so many of my graduating colleagues last weekend, and I've continued the tradition. This is mostly because I refuse to update my prescription until the bar has wreaked its final havoc on my myopia and because i am a teacher's pet, goody goody who likes to pay attention and nod and take notes and such sundries. It may have interfered with really getting to know my fellow bar-preppers, but there are some interesting characters in my general proximity.

Mostly, there is the little Chinese lady next to me. Note, this is not a reference to her ethnicity (although that is presumably also Chinese), but to the fact that she has a heavy accent, hails from Taiwan, behaves according to many familiar cultural tropes of a Chinese lady in her sixties, and praises the boy behind us as being so handsome because he is half Chinese. And I call her little, because she is little. Anyways, every day she comes to class with the most astounding conflagration of JUNK FOOD I have seen outside of a 711. It's possible on her way to bar prep, she gets stoned and robs at the nearest convenient store, as it is definitely a Harold and Kumar go to Bar Prep array of munchies.

And of course, she feels a fundamental imperative to share - started with me, then the girl behind us, then the boy across the way. Pretty soon she really will have to arrive with a grocery cart or pallet to satisfy her exponentially expanding need to feed. Every day I will look away for a minute and suddenly a huge pile of day-glo Doritos, a coke, and a tower of cookies will be perched on the edge of my book. It's a little baffling, since while I am the world's biggest food scavenger I am terrified of Doritos, can't drink regular soda because the sugar goes right to my stomach, and... ok, I'll eat the cookies. But it's also very rude to refuse food (in general and in most any culture that encourages the excessive giving of food). So I will often nibble quietly, wait for her to leave for a break and then sneak a huge handful of treats back into her enormous baggies of them. Sometimes she will notice that I'm running low and restock me at this point. If this happens, I leave with an enormous paper towel of ORANGE that may hide in the nearest trash receptacle. It's mildly Vaudevillian.

There is also a trio of fellas behind me for whom I developed an instantaneous and completely irrational contempt. Now, of course I've had plenty of time to make up fantastic self-rationalizing justifications for this contempt, but at the end of the day it is a contempt first, reasons later scenario and I begrudgingly admit it. I think it's something about the way they talk: like jocks. Not in content necessarily (most of the content of their conversations is about their Bar prep and I'll get to that in a sec), but in pitch, pace, drag and idiom.

 But speaking of their Bar prep (see attendant parenthetical), they do seem to have missed some of the point. We were expressly instructed many times to spend a little bit (NO MORE THAN 2 HOURS) reviewing the material we cover in lecture and make checklists (very big picture views of issues that will definitely come up) and then get into doing the essays so that we can practice recall, writing and making it up when we don't necessarily remember a rule. Their conversation is usually about their "outlines" (law school term, which I admit I use, but my notes and checklists are nothing like my law school outlines) and how they have spent four to six hours a piece every day writing them and just didn't know how they were expected to condense it down into one page (recommended length for checklists). Yesterday one of them expressed surprised that "we were supposed to be memorizing already???" As they have all been doing their practice essays with all their notes. Including the ones we turn in for comment. So, post-hoc, I roll my eyes at them a lot while trying not to overhear their conversation, and even though it doesn't effect me, I still feel like they're cheating.

I also have a doppleganger, although as all of my dopples, not so much in appearance. My dopples are often bird-like with boyish features and pixie cuts. But in habit, we both insist upon walking up to the fourth floor to use the bathroom there, take the steps two at a time, and always refill our water bottles at the drinking fountain outside. I suppose this could be the grounds for a great friendship, but we're also both awkward and introverted, so it's just kind of a funny matter of timing so that we don't spend too much time following each other and pretending we do not engage in this ritual every day.