...and breathe.

I am finally settled!!! :D I have moved back down south, to a beautiful love nest with Lovely Boy, settled in to my new job and for the time being at least, all is calm. I can breathe!!! It is such a relief, we have even finally sorted out our broadband, so in theory I can actually get back into writing this blog without feeling the need to close the screen every five seconds because my sister has walked in to the room.

In terms of the BVC, exam results for year 1 were fine. I'm on target for a VC if things carry on the way they are going. The nerves got the best of me in my Advocacy 1 exam which seriously sucked as all year I was doing so well, but as everything else went well I'm not allowing it to eat away at me too much. I've had 2 pupillage interviews this time around, the first one (on the day I moved house) was a total train wreck, I got lost on my way there and was pretty flustered and couldn't really think straight - so there was no surprise when I didn't get through to the second round. The second interview went really well I think. The panel had really read my application in advance and their questions were quite encouraging. I know it is unlikely that I'll secure pupillage this year, given it's my first crack at it, but still I'm slightly apprehensive about tomorrow as no rejection has been forthcoming as yet.

As much as I've moaned about being so busy over the last few months, I've still found plenty of time to party all over London since I've been back, and I even partied in Germany for a weekend with my friends and a boat load of HOT German men. Lovely Boy was at home, naturally ;)

It's soooo good to be back! :)

Holding my breath

Life is so hectic at the moment that I have still not had time to fully feel the happiness I'm sure I am due since discovering that I've been awarded a Scholarship. I've moved back down to London and started a new job although I am technically homeless (again) as Lovely Boy and I have not been able to find a place to live together as quickly as we had anticipated.

Non-Olpas applications, I am ashamed to admit have gone completely out of the window as I am so short on time and since I am couch surfing with friends, finding the time and space in which to sit down and crack out a snitch winning application has been bloody impossible. If I am honest I have barely found the time to prepare for my Conference and Advocacy exams.

I have spent the past month looking forwards to the 6th June, when Year 1 of the BVC will be over and I will finally get the opportunity to come up for air, maybe even have a lazy week in the sunshine? Alas, it is not meant to be, as I discovered today that the following weekend I will be moving house and attending a Pupillage interview on the same day! Two things I have wanted so much... and they both come on the same day?!

I'll sleep when I'm dead. I hope.

October teaching weekend.

I had my first proper teaching weekend this weekend, and I have to say I'm feeling positive. There are a lot of things to complain about I guess, but on the whole I'm pretty happy. My classmates and I have bonded really well, I was expecting cut-throat competition and point scoring all the time, but so far none of that. We're all pretty supportive of each other and generally just enjoy each other's company.

Legal Research takes up so much time it is untrue! Already I loathe MS Word and its' inability to consistently help me with the formatting of my research record. Sometimes it plays along and that "auto format" thingy works brilliantly, and then it will just stop doing it and I have to try and figure out what it was that it was doing automatically. I'm useless with computers at the best of times, and when you've been working on something for hours and it suddenly decides to change your font, the temptation to throw the damn thing out of the window nearly gets the better of me. The actual process of researching the problems and writing it up is not so bad though, I quite like it, although I wish there was a way of fast-forwarding the slow bits.

Advocacy went really well. I was quite nervous about getting up for the first time, but actually it was pretty fun. I think the key at this stage is probably confidence. Especially getting up in front of my classmates, instead of imagining them being critical of the negatives, I tried to imagine them being impressed by the bits I did well, and it really helped. It meant that I didn't care about them watching, I was just focusing on the job in hand. I really liked the way that the class was structured, and the advice the tutor gave was individual to the person, and dealt with their biggest issue, whatever that was. The best bit though in terms of a confidence boost, was that I got a "Very Competent" for my first go :) very competent and very proud.

Civil remains dull as dishwater in my eyes. The class prep took so long I could feel myself ageing as I worked my through the CPR. I want to get over my dislike of the subject, I want to keep an open mind about which area of law I want to practice in, but the reality is that it just seems so boring in comparison to crime!

Criminal obviously, was better. There was loads of reading for that as well though. I made the mistake of preparing for Civ and Crim last of all, which was not a good idea. This time around I'm going to do them first, because you just cannot rush it if you want to remember any of it. The questions we had to prepare for the class helped though because I was able to focus my reading, but there is very little guidance on whether for the exam we need to know EVERYTHING or just the topics we discuss in the class. Oh and does anyone know if the MCT questions handed out in the SGS are reflective of the questions in the exam in the sense of the level of difficulty that is?? Because they seemed quite straightforward, but I keep hearing horror stories about the exam... and of course, there are no "past papers" we can look at until the mock exam.

Written Skills was taught really well. It was the first time that we didn't seem to rush through the content at break neck speed, instead we were actually being taught an approach to opinion writing and good methods to prepare and plan.

We haven't had Conference yet, which is one that I'm a bit uncertain about. It will hopefully go well, but unlike advocacy, I've never seen a Barrister actually doing the skill, so I find it difficult to visualise myself doing it. But hey ho, for now I've got looking for a job to continue worrying about!

Day 1 of BVC

... was brilliant :)

All of the other PT students that I got chatting to seemed down to earth, nice friendly decent people. All of them are working as well and all of them had personalities. Not a Law Zombie in sight. Given that my experience of other law students at university was quite a negative one, this was such a relief and I'm over the moon about how nice everybody was. A few people seemed absolutely insane, commuting in for the course from the far reaches of the globe (!), and given that so many of them have families and children as well as a full time job to juggle, I don't feel nearly so hard done by with my unclear employment situation.

The course itself is exciting me no end. The only bit today that seemed a bit dreary was Civil Lit which doesn't surprise me, I'm a Crime girl at the end of the day. But even that was exciting in the sense that everything is relevant, it is all about how you actually go about being a Barrister rather than the academic studying of the law itself. It almost made me giggle a bit at one point from sheer excitement. It just seems so surreal that all of a sudden, I've started the BVC. At one point at uni I never thought I'd make it, and with all of the bad luck I've been having with work and housing, I haven't had time to worry and be nervous about it beginning, I just kind of turned up to register and there I was, in the lecture theatre starting the course!

Adults Only

I have a vague memory of being a child, possibly in some sort of tacky tourist shop whilst on holiday, and at the back of the store there was an "Adults Only" section, partitioned off from the rest of the store, that naturally made me and every other child that ever saw it desperately curious. What I have recently discovered is that within that Adults Only section of life lies misery, stress, and exploitation. I wish I'd never crossed over.

My job has, to some extent fallen through. I can still work for them, provided I'm willing to be exploited at a wage that is £10K p.a. less than I was originally offered and realistically not enough to live on (let alone pay extortionate BVC fees from). Unhelpfully, people keep pointing out to me that there is a recession, high levels of unemployment, blah blah blah. They shut up when I mention that none of the men that do the same job that I do have had their pay cut. Oh, and I'm still homeless as the wage they have offered me is too low for me to commit to the rent that I had initially been lined up to pay. And what do my parents say? "Welcome to the Adult World".

BVC starts on Thursday, completely and utterly not ready for this stage of my life to begin, and yet it is happening anyway. I don't like this Adult thing... is there a reverse gear?

No colouring in for me...

I got accepted onto the BVC today :D

BPP were down as my first choice, and they've offered me a place on their part time course. I know many of you have your opinions on the merits of each of the schools, but I'm going to go with them. City don't offer as good a part time course and CofL, well, rejected me (on the grounds that I'd put them as my third choice).

So, colouring in or no colouring in, my decision has kind of been made for me; for which I am sooo grateful, as I would have spent weeks agonising over whether my instincts about BPP were wrong. Now I can still agonise over that, but at least I wont have a choice about where I go!

Last week I sat a FRU exam thing, which was an experience... Made even more memorable by the (ugly yet seemingly intelligent) GDL guy that decided the end of the exam was a good time to hit on me... Thankfully I had to get home to the cat.

The exam itself was very odd I thought. I constantly felt like I wasn't giving them what they were asking for, and had no idea how much they expected to be written for each response. It was a bit bizarre being around all those students as well. Not because there was anything wrong with them, but the fact that I found their company quite pleasant. I had been expecting to find them all as annoying as they were at uni, but they weren't. There was even very little bragging about work experience and superiority complex induced conversation. In fact, had the cat not been waiting for me at home in need of feeding, love and attention (which it hadn't received the night before as I didn't go home) I might have even taken up ugly but seemingly intelligent boy's offer of drinks. My boyfriend is currently in another country with his ex-girlfriend (!), and I could do with some jealousy inducing anecdotes to pass onto him. I've been collecting them recently.

I'm also not sure when I'll find out the result (of the exam that is, not the jealousy inducing anecdotes; I don't know when that will be sorted out either though...), but it could go either way. Weirdly, if I haven't passed, I don't think it will bother me. I'll just sit it again and see what happens. There was a girl who announced before the exam that she was resitting and it was the hardest exam she'd ever done in her life, which was oddly reassuring.

In the mean time though, I'm set to vegetate at home as I seem to have come down with the flu. :( I'm desperately hoping my immune system kicks it out asap as I have a tendency to take ages to recover from stuff like this and I have a mini-pupillage next week!

Multiple Choice

I got an email today from City Law school, inviting me to a BVC open day 2 days before the accept/reject emails are sent out.

This has thrown me slightly, as I can't figure out whether this is:

(a) a good thing, because surely it would be cruel of them to invite me to an open day unless they were planning on accepting me;

(b) a bad thing because as my second choice, they will have only gotten my application if BPP have decided to reject me (is this the way it works or have I made this up?);

(c) a test. If I don't apply to go, will they reject me. (Common sense tells me that this is not how it works, but all the same, I have a suspicious mind).

(d) none of the above. I should stop speculating and let life unfold as it pleases.

I has also set my mind spinning about whether or not I want to go to CLS. Aside from the fact that it is only one initial different from CLG (positive) their part time course is no where near as appealing as the part time course at BPP. They have week night sessions rather than weekends, and the whole reason I decided I would be able to do the part time thing was because of the weekend sessions, and yet I decided to put CLS as 2nd and College of Law 3rd.

I know why I did this, it was based on all the good things the Barristers in the pub had to say about CLS, and the lack of anything positive that I've heard about CoL. This could well be because the Barristers that drink in the pub all went to CLS, and are therefore biased, and I've only met LPC-ers from CoL, so who knows whether that was a good reason to base my choice on or not.

What I am absolutely clear on now though, is that it's BPP that I want. This goes against my initial instincts completely... I thought I would absolutely hate going to another institution that feels as corporate as LSE (which the Open Evening they had proved to me that it does), but they really do offer the best deal for part timers. Even if it is the most expensive, it just seems to offer the most flexibility and support for part timers like myself. Oddly, I also found the corporate feel quite comforting. I may have hated my university for most of the time I was there, but I know I managed to do well (enough) there, and it made me feel more comfortable! Plus the Law Zombies all went off to do the LPC. Surely they wont have infiltrated the BVC, and of those that do, surely they wont be part timers like myself?

So, fingers crossed, on the 2nd March I'll get the offer I'm after. But maybe I should register for that open day...