Sometimes you need to sweat the small stuff.

I know we're not supposed to sweat the small stuff. First off, I'm pretty bad about that in general - I sweat everything. Except apparently what I need to sweat. Like the Bar Examination. So here's the deal. I busted my butt the last few weeks studying - really - that's all I did was study and go to work - fun life, huh? So by the time I walked into the exam on Tuesday morning I felt pretty good. I was feeling okay. This was my third one, I felt I had studied well enough and I was ready to go. And then the exam was passed out. And I thought to myself "what in the hell is this?" You see, historically there are two topics on the morning essay exam and six questions on the afternoon essay that can be pulled from a list of about 12 subjects. Then on the second day (all multiple choice questions) there are six more subjects. So you study the day two subjects different then the day one topics because one you have to do multiple choice on and the others you have to be able to spit back verbatim what the law is. Well, apparently, unknown to me, they changed the examination. Now the second day topics are fair game on the first day - obviously I did not know that. I swear I did a "due diligence" (a nice legal term for you there) search for information on the bar exam and got myself a list of topics together. I was using bar study books from 2003 (I borrowed then from a friend because the bar study course is about $1500) but as far as I knew the test hadn't changed. But it did. So needless to say I was pretty upset. I felt like I paid a lot of money for this, put a lot of time into it and really put my life on hold to study and prepare myself but because of my own negligence (legal terms everywhere) I'm likely not going to pass. There is still some hope if other people didn't know either, but most lawyers pay a bit more attention to that stuff then I do apparently. So I'm pretty bummed but I guess it's one of those lessons learned in life. I'm happy as hell to be back in St. Louis and out of freezing cold Chicago (never ever ever go to Chicago in February if you can at all help it) and done with the exam and back to my normal life, but I'm bummed I really blew this and I have no excuse. If I had studied and then didn't make it because my flight was grounded that would suck but it wouldn't be because I'm an idiot. If I had gotten really sick and didn't do well, then again, it would be beyond my control. But this really wasn't. And while I swear they hid the information deep on the website, I should have made a better effort to find it. So that's the bar news. I don't find out until forever, but I'm not holding my breath. I can still hold onto some tiny hope but it's not looking good.
Good news is I'm back home and can get back to life. I kept promising my friends that Stupid Lame Studying Missy will be gone soon and Fun Missy will be back. I'm back. :)