You Might Be Studying For The Bar If...

You have a clever idea for a blog post, but the best format you can think of is a cheap, cliched knock off of a Jeff Foxworthy joke.

Your last thought before you go fall asleep everynight regards a doctrine of law (duh).

Your second to last thought is a calculation of how many hours you will sleep tonight.

Your third to last thought is a violent fantasy about the total stranger who, this morning, got up to the Dunkin' Donuts counter and didn't have his money out yet...

...your fourth to last thought is one of complete disbelief that no one you told about the guy at Dunkin' Donuts shared in your moral outrage... not even the person lying next to you.

Your diet now consists primarily or even solely of foods that you swore off years ago.

Last thing you remember is getting really angry at some asshole in front of you in line at the supermarket. Now you've just awoken under a remote tree. Your jeans are tattered and the rest of the clothes you were wearing are missing.

Drinking leads to crying.

Meeting with your friends begins to sound a little like an intervention in that everyone is telling you how much they care about you, how great you are, how everything is gonna be fine, "you can do this."

Punch-lines to your jokes involve words like "loquitur," or "remainderman," or "estoppel," or phrases like "and then I said 'Sca-lee-a? I hardly know ya!'"

You could swear all the pedestrians in crosswalks have cross-hares on their shirts, and that those who don't, ought to or might as well.

You recently discovered that a car horn can break or wear out.

You're studying in the library when someone stops near your table to make a cell phone call or talk to somebody else, and you imagine yourself lunging over your table like Mini-Me at him.

You have a sense of entitlement with regard to things that, two months ago, you would have thought was a lovely favor... like having someone make dinner for you. When someone does make dinner for you, you become a world-class food critic i.e. "There's too much salt." After announcing your criticism, you change it into something personal i.e. "How could you put so much salt in this when you know I have to study for the bar?"

Your significant other has asked you recently to "please shave."

Your TiVo hard drive is maxed out.

Whe you see total strangers with great tans, you think to yourself, "She can't be studying very much if she's laying outside so much," even though you have no reason to belive that she is even taking the bar.

You're expert with respect to which pens are the most comfortable, which highlighters last the longest, and which pencils have the best erasers.

Part of you craves nasty weather so you don't feel like you're missing out on anything.

You're never prouder than when you find a way to save yourself five minutes of time... like by brushing your teeth in the shower... as if that five minutes changes everything. Alternatively, deciding in advance to brush your teeth in the shower can be justification for hitting the snooze button one more time.

You ask yourself everyday, "What book did I forget to read in law school?"

You classify your friends and loved ones into categories like: people whose phone calls you will return when you get a chance, people whose calls you will return after the bar, people whose calls you will not take under any circumstances, and people who, if they call you again, you will blow up their house...

...or people you whose calls you will not take, but you will call back, but only at a time when you know they will not be able to answer the phone, so you can just leave a message without getting stuck on the phone with them, and they can't give you a hard time for not returning their calls.

Every night you make a new resolution like it was eff'n New Year's, only all of your resolutions pertain to studying.

You hate people whom you only know thru conversations that you overhear.

You suffer from what I will call Cinderella Syndrome, where you find yourself with a loved one at the end of the night, and think "If we're gonna make out tonight, we better get started soon because I gotta go to bed early so I can get up on time and start studying." Apparantly, if you don't wake up by 8AM on Saturday or Sunday, your PMBR CDs turn into pumpkins.

You do that thing in the shower, that fighters always do in movies after the fight... where they stand under the shower head, hands out in front of them against the wall, and head down 'cause they're too tired to stand on their own.

Your plans for after the bar don't necessarily involve something specific, but if you don't somehow make the evening news, your post bar celebration will be somewhat of a disappointment.

You have a new four letter "f" word that you're terrified to use and you shiver when other people use it. It rhymes with "pail."

All your dreams involve absurd law school dramas... like failing law school algebra, or sleeping thru your law school spanish exam. You wake up physically and emotionally exhausted as if you actually did it.

All of your voice mails begin with "Dude, are you alive?"

Instead of all the things you used to do in your spare time... like drinking, making out, watching TV, leisure reading (remember what that was like?), or all four, now you just blog.