Monday, March 29, 2010

Hope Springs Eternal, Again

"I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope."

- Red, The Shawshank Redemption

After I submitted what hopefully was the last blue book I will ever submit in my life last Saturday, I also hopefully finished Tax 2 and hopefully said goodbye to five long years of cramming for night classes after work, photocopying boxes of cases half of which I probably tried to read at least once, grasping for answers out of thin air during recits, writing down answers legibly, or at least mumbling them, for your reciting seatmate to see or hear. (Disclaimer: I actually still have to submit a portion of an arbitral award, but I just need a working computer to do that.) Five long years were spent looking for the perfect reviewer after an all-too imperfect semester, surviving final exams, waiting for grades, removing conditional failures, and bidding - yes, bidding - for subjects. We also spent some time counseling (presumably) indigent litigants, representing them before courts of (presumably) justice, and experiencing firsthand how (presumptously) a law firm should not be run.

Hopefully, they are all over, and hopefully, I will not have to do any of those things ever again.