the cost of pain

i've gotten back my postcard from the virginia board of bar examiners. i've got it tucked away now in a folder for safe-keeping. not that i ever think i'll have to present it to anyone, but you never know.

this morning i registered for the 6 day pmbr course that starts the day after graduation. so much for having a break between the end of my job and the start of bar/bri. as it stands right now, my last day of work will be may 9th, graduation is on may 11th and pmbr starts on the 12th. the class goes from 9:00 am to 3:30 pm and runs until saturday the 17th. bar/bri starts on the 19th. sigh. it's going to be a rough summer - i can see it now.

throughout everything i have done to prepare for taking the bar, i have been amazed at how expensive things are. places like bar/bri and pmbr capitalize on the fears of all the law students and end up charging gobs of money for these preparatory classes. i swear it's a conspiracy. sigh.

outta my hands

okay, i did it. it's been sent by certified mail with return receipt. i included a postcard for them to datestamp too. when it comes to this shit, i'm not taking any chances!

time to hit up the post office

So I’ve completed my bar application and the character and fitness questionnaire. It’s sitting on the corner of my desk. I haven’t sealed the envelope because I have this horrible fear that I’ve filled everything out wrong and that I’ve somehow managed to leave out a pile of uber important documents that needed to go with it.

Sigh.

I am 99.9% sure that I have everything I need in that envelope, but that last .01% is causing a lot of anxiety! Sheesh.

I’ve just got to do it. Tape it shut. Walk it to the friggin post office and let it go. I have to keep telling myself that if there is anything wrong with it, or anything missing from it, I still have time to correct things.

In addition to the panicking and stress related to the application, I have also been worried a lot about the whole “dress code” thing. I wish I could just know whether or not they would have a problem with me wearing a suit – I’d leave off the tie if that would make things easier. I just worry since Virginia is such a conservative state that their dress code warning of “men in suits and women in skirts or pants” is meant to be strictly adhered to. What about us butch women!? There must be some butch, somewhere, who has taken the Virginia bar exam and can guide me through this. I don’t want to have to buy a woman’s suit just to wear that day. But I also don’t want to push my luck and wear what I would consider to be my normal court attire and be asked to leave the bar exam.

That would suck.

In other news, I am a little nervous about this so-called job offer that my boss was talking to me about a few months ago. It seems less of a sure thing that I thought it was. There are four partners in the firm and the one I primarily work for (a 60 yo lesbian attorney) was the one who had started talking to me about how she thinks I could come back after the bar exam and be a law clerk and then transition into being an associate. It seems that she might be the only one who had this grand idea, though. Yesterday I was talking to one of the other partners and she was asking what I was going to do after the exam (ie. hang out my own shingle, interview at big firms, etc) and when I told her that I’d love to stay here, she made a comment to the effect of: we don’t need you. Or maybe she was trying to say “we don’t need a Virginia lawyer,” or maybe “we just don’t want another attorney, let alone you.” So here I’ve been, pretty confident that I had the whole job thing taken care of, when really, there is nothing set.

What irks me the most is that my boss would actually plant this seed of hope within me when she hasn’t talked to the other partners about it. They might all veto the idea and now I’ve lost out on months of job searching. I’m having lunch with my boss tomorrow to try to sort things out. She said she would poll the partners soon so that I could know one way or the other.

At this point I just want to know. If I need to plan for months of unemployment, then I need to know this as soon as possible. Blah.

i have almost all of the virginia bar application completed. right now i think there are just a couple blanks i still need to fill in - mostly related to my student loan balances. i also need to get my passport photos taken, so i have to find the time to leave work for a little bit and head over to a shop nearby to have them done. it's not that big a deal, but it's just a hassle.