Remember: That time you borrowed a pencil for the LSAT

There are times when I think signing up for the LSAT two months before the deadline is good enough, but sometimes I’m wrong. So wrong, in fact, that I end up on a waiting list which inevitably gets me a test spot in BALTIMORE.

The night before the test, Mandrew and I head up to “the greatest city in America” (apparently, Baltimore). I set up headquarters in the living room of one of his high school friends, where I pack my one gallon ziplock (the only container allowed in the testing center) with 3 pencils, a water bottle, my ID, my LSAT ticket stub and some cash. I don’t cram, since I’ve been cramming the last 2 months, but I do try to get some sleep.

(Photo: S.C. Asher)

I wake up an hour before my alarm trying to figure out this problem:

If the 10th amendment is traveling east at 40 mph and the 2nd amendment is traveling west at 75 mph, in the resulting collision, how many Supreme Court justices will be replaced by the next president? And will Roe v. Wade be overturned?

I shower quickly, use the restroom TWICE, grab my ziplock and run out the door. After running around this foreign city for twenty minutes, I finally find a cab driver awake at 7:30 on a Saturday morning. He takes me to the hotel where the test is being administered. I’m an hour early, so I take my nervous jitters out on the men’s restroom three times before I check in and take my seat.

The girl next to me is organizing her ziplock on her desk. While examining a glitter-covered pencil says, “I don’t know if this is a no. 2 pencil,” and takes out a normal one. I courtesy laugh and examine my own pencils just in case.

(*&^#$%*(# [HEAD EXPLODES] *&#@&@^% [EYES FALL OUT OF HEAD]

All three of my pencils are no. 2.5s. TWO AND A HALFs! WHO EVEN MAKES THESE!?!?

I search my peers frantically. I have just become THAT kid, the one that had to BORROW a pencil for the LSAT! The one that can’t read SIMPLE directions (NUMBER 2 PENCILS ONLY).
The upright girl with SEVEN immaculately sharpened no. 2s is probably too anal retentive to lend me one, but the girl next to her in the hoodie, with unwashed hair, might just be the one.

Sure enough! She lends me two pencils, but only after she and everyone around decide I PROBABLY won’t make it to law school. And if I do, I’ll probably be hit by a car on my first day, when I stop in the middle of the crosswalk to search my backpack for a writing utensil.

I wait for the test to being, and just before they fire the starting shot, my bladder gives up. Despite having gone to the bathroom a total FIVE times this morning, I have to go AGAIN. But since I’m determined to finish this test AND with a DECENT score, I just writhe and reel with borrowed pencil in hand.

ON YOUR MARKS! (Hold it! HOLD IT!)
GET SET! (Don’t cry! DO NOT CRY!)
GO! (You WILL finish this test!)