Not that I completely stayed away...

My last exam was Wednesday. Studies over for the year! The exams were awful from a sitting them with an injury perspective but good from a content perspective as the questions were not scary and on reading them I immediately began formulating the answers which is how you want that 10 minutes reading time at the beginning to feel.

But...

Injury wise though I did not get through either of them without severe pain and drug side effects as I was forced to take the heavier duty drugs that screw with my mind to cope with the pain. In the longer exam, the 4 hour one, the last hour saw me grappling with moving lines on my answer book and difficulties with perspective - I kept having to think really hard as to whether my pen was in fact touching the paper even though it felt too me like I had pushed it through the desk. I don't recall what I wrote for the answer to the last problem question but I do recall crossing a lot of things out - I HATE Tramol.

Due to this, even though I am certain I passed both papers, I still went to the med centre and applied for an aegrotat as with essay marks reaching as high as 97.5% (I can write an essay in short bursts at home without causing myself pain or needing to write it under the influence of pain drugs) I am not going to take coming out of the course with a lousy C without a fight because I cannot sit for one hour (let alone 3 or 4). There is no guarantee that my application will succeed, they may take the view that "you've passed, what's your problem?" but they have been known to on occasion take a more sympathetic view and look at your work over the year so it is worth paying the $50 to ask.

I am on a high though, that after years of wondering if I would ever pick up the degree I began back in 1993 and try to finish it, and if I did, would I still be able to do it, and then when I tried to do it I was in a car accident and couldn't attend class so Matt and one of my law school friends taped my lectures for me yet I finished it and I pulled some of my best ever marks for assessment during the year despite being injured.

It feels good.

It is also cool that my job, which I can only do part-time as I wait for surgery is now all about my legal role, they have hired a temp to do my PA and HR roles so I do nothing but legal work when I go into work which I LOVE! Yesterday, after sitting the exam and being exhausted the night before, I had to get up at the crack of dawn and head for Shieff Angland's Queen St office for a breakfast appointment - so cool!

I now have to suss what I am studying next year. Given my HR role at work I figure Employment Law at summer school, then knock off the last 2 compulsory papers Legal Ethics for Semester A, Legal Research 2 for the whole year and due to the massive quantity of work I do in the area of Trade Marks for work, Intellectual Property for Semester B. I am tempted to add 1 more to each A and B semester as then with 1 more summer school paper after that I would be completely finished but I am not sure if that will be too much of a juggle with work and kids and recovering from surgery.