For what it’s worth, my statistics on the simulated MBE and the real MBE is as follows:
Bar/Bri Simulated: 149.
PMBR Simulated: 120.
Real MBE scaled: 179.5.
Take-away point: the simulated tests are probably way too hard, so don’t panic like I did when I finished the PMBR simulated test.
Looks like I passed.
前些时候提到的另一个心愿，今天终于实现了。下面的留言，是给以后找到这里来的同学看的。
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南大的同学你好。你找到这个网站，大概是希望找到一些有关“南京大学阿尔蒙—王氏奖学金”和“南京大学阿尔蒙—王氏助学金”的信息。我是这两个项目的设立人，在这里向你简单介绍一下情况。
关于奖／助学金：
本奖／助学金始设于零八年十一月份。奖学金每年三名，用于奖励南京大学数学系，经济系和计算机系的本科生各一名。希望你本专业学习成绩优秀，并尽可能多选修如文学、历史、哲学、艺术等非本专业课程。助学金每年四名，用于帮助家庭经济困难的本科生完成学业，专业不限，但希望你能够在学习之余积极参与学校的勤工俭学计划。
奖／助学金具体实施办法请向你校学工处老师咨询。
关于设立者：
我在南京长大，后来在美国学习和工作，现在是某公司里一名普通职员。当年来美国念书时受了阿尔蒙教授的个人慷慨资助，得以完成本科学业，同时也在学习生活等各方面得到他常年的帮助和指导。师恩常念，无以为报，于是设立这项奖学金和助学金，希望能以同样的方式去帮助别人，同时也希望你工作以后也能够拿出一部分收入来，用以奖励成绩优秀的学生或帮助家庭困难的学生完成学业，或者以其他方式去帮助别人，把始于阿尔蒙教授的这份善意继续传递下去。
早上象打仗一样，把小南安在餐桌前吃早饭，然后进卧室找衣服，期间萍儿打开吹风机吹干头发。一会儿出来检查小南吃饭情况，她仰着脸问，爸爸，你刚才是在给妈妈吸尘吗？
所里好像活还是有的，也好像没有人说天要塌下来。欢迎新同学的活动还是有声有色歌舞升平，只不过有细心的人发现，依然敞开供应的矿泉水，已经从去年的某意大利进口牌子换成了美国土产牌子了。
Now that the bar exam is over, I am officially done with the hazing ritual that began three years ago. And I am bored again (and watching yet another Law & Order episode from probably 5 years ago that, unsurprisingly, follows the gruesome-discovery-to-arrest-to-trial routine, just like every other episode). I know I said I’d stop writing for this blog, but I am bored. And I figured I could at least write down a few thoughts about the bar exam to complete my rite of passage, from pre-law days to post bar exam. Hopefully what I have to write down next will one day prove helpful to future foreign students taking the NY bar, like that prior recorded recollection exception to the hearsay rule–or is the “memory refreshed” exception more applicable? I don’t know, and don’t care any more.
1. NY Essays. I had been dreading the NY essays for the longest time. I didn’t take family law or trust & estates in law school, and NY practice is a whole lot different from FRCP. I did take secured transactions and negotiable instruments, so that helped a lot. But it turns out that although BarBri doesn’t teach you everything that’s going to be on the bar exam (my secured transactions notes from law school span 200 pages; only ~10% of the topics were covered in BarBri), it actually does teach you everything you need to know. It’s just a matter of memorizing a sufficient percentage of the lectures so that you can at least get a substantial percentage of the questions right. The issues are fairly straight forward once you spot them and know the law. Heck, even if you don’t know the law you can make some up, and you will probably get some points too for that too if you are sufficiently close. I skimmed probably 30-40 practice essay questions in the barbri material in the weeks before the exam, and thought the actual questions on the exam were quite similar. The real thing was somewhat easier, although not by a whole lot.
As a side note, I freaking hate having to write those essays in IRAC format. Reminds me of my elementary school diary entries that invariably started with “This morning the sun came out” or something to that effect, followed by “I played with my friends,” and concluded with “It was a very eventful day.” Disgusting, but people do certain things at certain stages of their life, and sometimes you have to do what you have to do, so…
2. NY Multiple Choice. Who cares. I did all the practice questions, scored pretty badly, and wasn’t too concerned. The actual exam questions were very similar to the practice questions too. They test you on a discrete legal issue or a NY special rule that you either know or you don’t. I had quite a few “WTF is that” moments during the real thing, but couldn’t care less.
3. MBE. This is where I find BarBri and PMBR to be a big disappointment. The real MBE is so different! The fact patterns on the real MBE test are actually MUCH shorter than BarBri’s and PMBR’s, and vastly better worded. When I was doing the practice tests I found it hugely frustrating that the BarBri and PMBR (especially PMBR) fact patterns were 1) long 2) often irrelevant, 3) poorly worded, and 4) call for the type of judgment call that is typically left to the jury (e.g., whether D’s action was reasonable, whether P’s injury was foreseeable). On the real exam, the questions are 1) short (most have just one short paragraph, the longest ones tend to be conveyance and mortgage questions, and they take up no more space than necessary) 2) most of the facts are relevant to the ultimate issue (or the decoys) in some way, 3) very well drafted and easy to spot what’s being tested, and 4) except for well-settled precedents (e.g., danger invites rescue, so negligence during rescue is foreseeable), no personal judgment calls are required.
The real MBE, at least to me, seemed also a whole lot easier than the BarBri and PMBR simulated exams. I got close to a 150 on the BarBri one and about a 130 on the PMBR one–probably in the 90th percentile or something–and still felt they were very difficult. I even nearly panicked during the couple of days before hte bar exam and was bracing for a brutal MBE day if the real thing would turn out to be PMBR-like. It turns out to be just the opposite. It’s probably the easiest part of the bar exam, and easier than the so-called BarBri intermediate practice questions.
But this doesn’t mean the practice questions aren’t helpful. They are very helpful in the sense that they do in fact test the very same legal issues that will be tested on the real bar. If I have to do this all over again (let’s hope not), I’d probably still do a lot of those practice questions, but will learn to ignore the annoyance of those elong-and-winding fact patterns, while keeping in mind that the real test will be vastly better drafted and more cleverly crafted.
4. MPT. Everyone seems to agree that it’s easy. It just takes a lot of time to write that thing. Ugh.
So that’s it for now. In other news, I managed to squeeze in three side trips–one to Washington (state), one to Montana/Wyoming, and one to Colorado in the two months between law school graduation and the bar exam. I’ve moved to New Jersey. Ping has started working. And I am now officially a full-time stay-at-home dad, for six weeks.
And I was told today that I officially graduated with a m.c.l. So, like my elementary school diary entries always concluded, it’s been a very eventful day.
So this is the last post of this blog. I’ve always thought that this would be the one place where I share with my readers my darkest inner-self, and where I could ramble on and on about my should-haves and would-haves and miscellaneous blogger bloopers.
But that’s not going to happen now. In the past few days, I graduated from law school, drove home to Chicago, and made up for all the sleep that I lost in the past three years. In the next few weeks, I will go to Denver for a weekend trip in the Rocky Mountain National Park, get started on the bar prep course, and move to New York.
To me, law school has become a thing of the past—something that I wasn’t sure I could do but somehow managed to do; same goes for this blog—I had little idea that this thing could last 3.5 years when I began writing. I’ve thought about taking this blog offline entirely after this, but just like one can’t really erase things from the past, this blog has taken on a life of its own in the virtual space (thanks to google cache and the like), so I’ll leave it in place. Meanwhile, I will be less responsive to emails, but do send me a GMAIL (username littlenorth) if you have questions about law school (Michigan in particular), have a need for a (novice) business lawyer, are recruiting for the Chinese government (mofcom, fmprc, and csrc in particular), or just want to say hello.
Until our paths cross again,
Littlenorth.
留出两天来清理房间，好像有点多。一天下来居然扔的扔送的送装箱的装箱，差不多准备完毕，随时可以撤离四合院了。
晚上才第一次听说有《再说长江》。记得小时候很喜欢看《话说长江》，于是兴致勃勃地到网上去找出这个新拍的记录片来看。看了第一集没看太明白，几个新老镜头对比印象比较深刻，解说词空洞无味，语无伦次。换第二集，看出点名堂来了，记录的是一个探险队去长江源头的历程，可是解说词实在是太空洞而煽情了，大段大段的废话，解说员（或者说是撰稿人）在长近一个小时的节目里非但没有传达多少有用的硬性信息，而且经常像喝多了一样，在毫无征兆的情况下莫名其妙地抒发情怀：什么伟大的河流有着令人骄傲的长度啊，什么冰川捍卫着中华儿女母亲河的贞洁啊，诸如此类，令人汗毛凛立。这种煽情手法在久违之后还是很难重新接受的。到后来听得实在是毛骨悚然，只好扫兴地关掉。实在不是崇洋媚外，但还是要说PBS, History, NatGeo和Discovery几个频道上的纪录片，不论是人文，地理，还是历史，都比这要强太多了（除了Discovery上没完没了造极其丑陋的摩托车的那个系列节目）。
不过还是要感谢今晚饭局上提起这个记录片的仁兄。至少画面很美，让我看见了青藏高原的冰川（好像比阿拉斯加南部那些的还要干净些），重庆二十年间的变化（即使只有十秒钟的镜头），和长江源头的一家藏胞（可惜只有一些生活场景没有太多进一步介绍，好像把人家当道具了）。打算休息一晚，等明天缓过劲来再看下一集试试，否则就只好快进到南京苏州那一集饱个眼福算了。
另外打算有空看看《士兵突击》。
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又记： 半夜和同学在宿舍里喝酒，一点多钟出门一看有另外一拨毕业生在四合院草地上坐着喝酒唱歌吃比萨饼，宛如国内大学生毕业，于是加入，直到凌晨四点半开始下雨，大家回屋睡觉。