Exhausted semester

WE ARRIVE AT THE HOTEL MEZZANINE early Wednesday morning and are efficiently herded into a ballroom larger than a football field. We are ………. and catalogued, the fees having long since been paid. There's a little nervous chatter, but not much ……... We're all scared to death.

Of the two hundred or so people taking ……. this outing, at least half finished at Memphis State last month. These are my friends and enemies.

I can feel …... here, very much like the first few weeks of law school when we were terribly concerned with each other's initial progress. I nod at a few acquaintances, silently hoping they ……. the exam because they're silently hoping I collapse too. Such is the nature of the ……...

Once we're all properly seated at folding tables spaced generously apart, we are given ten minutes' worth of ……... Then the exams are passed out at exactly 8 A.M. The exam begins with a section called Multi-State, an endless series of tricky……. questions covering that body of law common to all states. It's absolutely impossible to tell how well I'm prepared.

THE EXAM ENDS at 5 P.M. Friday, with a whimper. We're too ……… to celebrate. They gather our papers tor the last time, and tell us we can leave. There's talk of a cold drink somewhere, for old times' sake, and six of us meet at Yogi's for a few rounds.

We learned after the first ……. in law school that it's best never to discuss exams. If notes are compared afterward, you become painfully aware of things you missed.