Shut The #%*$ Up! I'm Taking A Test!

I was making very good time to Bloomington. I had taken off all the gold & black paraphenalia on the Mighty Green Ranger so I could enter the heart of enemy territory easily. I didn't need a drunken frat boy nursing the leftovers of a Little 500 party keg to decide it would be funny to disassemble my car. Not that I did anything like that back in the day ;-)

I must have been just behind Kelly and Amanda Y because I literally parked behind them as they were getting out of their car. It was a few blocks to the law school and I needed a quickie lunch. The last thing I needed was to be hungry in the middle of a two hour exam. Hey, I'm near Kirkwood Ave. which has all the bars, shops, and eateries that are by every college. Wouldn't you know it I get the new employee at the bagel shop. They're out of the hot dogs now. Okay fine, how about a bagel with lunch meat X. Out of lunch meat X. I look down and inquire what lunch meat is in front of me and ask for that. Why is it the simpler I want my sandwich the more impossible it was to have: some bread, some meat, a slice of cheese, and some mustard with a Diet Coke was all I wanted!

I found Kelly and Amanda Y. at a table in the library. Amanda Y. thought I was so confident because I didn't have any materials with me. No I wasn't! If I didn't know the material by now I wasn't going to suddenly get it 30 minutes before the test. So I borrowed Amanda Y's book on judicial conduct. Library etiquette in Bloomington must be very different than elsewhere. I could hear sorority girl talk about her vacation from 25 feet away: and you know, and then it was like, oh that's so cute, oh that was so cool. We discovered Eddie Murphy's career has gone so far downhill that he's now a librarian in their law library. Just close your eyes and you heard Donkey talking, from 25 feet away.

"This is the loudest f*$#ing library I've ever been in," was expressed by one of us. I offered to take them out, but the irony of employing Attitude Adjuster and Motivator on the two hopeless souls on the eve of a legal ethics exam was not lost on us.

Off topic: that's the problem with us as a society. We believe in the sanctity of our space and body. Our problem is that sometimes we need to violate other's civil rights for their own good. Tort law needs a new defense called the Knocking Some Sense In Your Head defense. This is the way it should work.

1. Two loud and obnoxious people [hereinafter Clueless Idiots] are talking in a library and are clueless to their behavior.
2. Good Samaritan punches out both both clueless idiots.
3. Normally this would be called assault and battery; however, when Clueless Idiots awaken the Good Samaritan informs them that he had to knock some sense into their heads.
4. Clueless Idiots suddenly realize that they were behaving like idiots and thank Good Samaritan for knocking some sense back into their heads.

Sounds like a perfectly workable system to me.

Back on topic: I didn't think we were getting into our testing room when I saw the workman and several spools of electrical cabling there. Usually not a good sign. The proctors divided us in half to get into two other rooms. Even with picture i.d. and being randomly assigned a seat it was the slowest check-in I've ever done. You would think they were letting us into the supersecret missile silo. The other half decided to use the original room. Poor test takers being herded around like cattle.

For Indiana 80% is what is needed to pass the MPRE. Get 40 out of 50 questions right and you're fine. In three out of four practice exams I was in the 74 to 76% range. Not a good sign for Brian. Yep, by working instead of studying I think I had earned enough money to retake the test in November.

The first three questions were unlike anything I had previously seen. It had usually taken me around 90 minutes to get through all 50 questions. I was done in an hour. This could not have been a good sign. Around a half hour into the exam I could hear giggling and slamming on what sounded like sheet metal next door. Where those workers back in the next room working ont he HVAC system? Then I heard even more giggling. Could someone go next door and talk them to shut up? BAM, BAM, BOOM! OMG, do they have sledgehammers over there? Our room faced the street and I swear I heard someone walk by playing a drum! I'll admit this wasn't as distracting as IndyJazzFest during my Sales final, but this was not optimal test taking conditions either.

I turned in the test, my mind blown away. This exam was nothing like what the practice exams were like. After the drive back to Indy I decided to check my mail at school. I ran into the Fabuluos Kelly P and her other twin Kelly. We all agreed that exam was nuts. I would say it was unethical to give such a goofy exam. Ladies, I hope you two did better than I. I wasn't passing it before. There's no way I passed it live.

I wonder if I should just go ahead and sign up for the November test?