Friday, June 12, 2009

Impulse Buys

Today I bought a new Mac on impulse. Tomorrow I am being admitted to a psychiatric ward.

My current computer was purchased as an older model in 2006. It has 512 mb hard drive and freezes up on a regular basis these days. During class earlier this week I began having serious second thoughts about choosing to hand write my bar exam as opposed to using ExamSoft software and typing my essays. 

My reasoning is this:
1) I have really bad handwriting
2) My thumb goes number after about 20 minutes of writing anything by hand. I have to stretch it to get circulation back and my handwriting suffers even more
3) the essay time limits are the same whether you're typing or writing
4) I'm scared to death about taking this test, so I think I should get every edge I can
5) one day in the very near future I will be handed 6 short substantive questions to be answered in only 3 hours. Then I will be handed 3 long substantive questions to be answered in another 3 hours. Yikes...

So I decided to type my exam and was even willing to do some serious modification to my computer to make sure it would make it through the exam. Then I find out that ExamSoft requires Mac OS Leopard, which I don't have and which would cost me $100. So logically I decided to spend $1,099 on a new computer that I need anyway and would almost guarantee to get me through the test unscathed.  

Can I afford this? Not really, but I have plenty of room on my credit card and I get air miles for my purchase (do you note the tone of rationalization?) and I can pay it off slowly in small payments even while I'm in France. I can sell my old Mac for a small sum and I also got a free Ipod and printer out of the deal because it's that time of year, so in all I think I made a good choice.

In other news, my class is trucking along at a nice click. We've covered real property, Alaska property, Alaska family law, criminal law and criminal procedure and Alaska crimes. Tomorrow we start contracts. I'm feeling like I'm falling behind a little bit, so I think I might camp out in the library on Sunday and try to play catch up a little bit. In the mean time I have a Saturday morning lesson tomorrow and should probably start thinking about getting some sleep.

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