studying for the Bar Exam

I like orga­ni­za­tion.  I like hav­ing plans.  I have cre­at­ed a plan that is sup­posed to moti­vate me to study for the Mis­souri Bar Exam, which I will take July 28th and 29th.  I’ve devised a point sys­tem.  Three col­ors of points, though they are all worth the same amount.  I get a blue point for every set (17 prob­lems) of mul­ti­ple choice ques­tions I do.  I’ve thought about hav­ing a qual­i­ty thresh­old, but that (and I) would be point­less.  Then, I get a green point for every essay I write.  Final­ly, I get a pur­ple point for 1) every 20 pages I read in the large out­lines, 2) every 20 note­cards I cre­ate for study­ing, and 3) every half hour I spend (pro­duc­tive­ly) study­ing oth­er­wise, though if I study for 50 min­utes all in one go, I get two points.  Basi­cal­ly, every point is rough­ly 30 min­utes of work.  So that’s my sys­tem.  Sounds great, right?  I have decid­ed that I need to amass 30 points before I can watch any Har­ry Pot­ter movie, and if I want to watch all five before July 15th, I need to get some seri­ous points going.  I have not earned many points so far.  I’m work­ing on it.

Also, I moved into Car­l’s house a week and a half ago.  Stuff is EVERYWHERE.  I feel torn between study­ing and clean­ing, and so I end up read­ing a mag­a­zine instead, nat­u­ral­ly.  It’s prob­a­bly a good thing Carl won’t move back to the States until Decem­ber.  It gives me plen­ty of time to reor­ga­nize.  I told him how I’ve been orga­niz­ing our books and DVDs and things.  He has a strange aver­sion to orga­ni­za­tion, and he has repeat­ed­ly cau­tioned me that his books will not stay the way I’ve put them.  It will be a fun mar­riage, I think.  Speak­ing of which, we’re doing things back­wards, and we’re going to basi­cal­ly take our hon­ey­moon this August while I’m over there.  We’ll spend a 7–10 days in Great Britain at the begin­ning, a week in Italy at the end, and we’re hop­ing to spend a week­end in Switzer­land (Zurich maybe?) and a week­end in Vien­na.  I’m real­ly look­ing for­ward to it.  I love hang­ing out with Carl, and we have such a great time togeth­er.  We have not done much trav­el­ing togeth­er, and I think it will be a lot of fun.  We have sim­i­lar ideas of what con­sti­tutes “fun,” which will be a great thing.  I can’t wait to be there.  Then, after we’re mar­ried, we’ll take a week­end or some­thing and go some­where close.  It may sound corny, but the thing I’m look­ing for­ward to most is just get­ting to be with my best friend.

I should study.