Exam from Hell

Today I took what is in my opinion the worst form of the Harvard Law final: the 8-hour "take home" exam. At 8:30am, the exam is distributed. You have until 4:30 to turn in a neatly typed exam, by hook or by crook. It is long, it is stressful, and it requires you to sit in one spot for 8 hours and write 15 or so pages on one or two topics. And you emerge all bleary-eyed and hungry. And I hate them hate them hate them.

But today was a brand of take home exam I have never before seen: the relentlessly soul-sucking, panic-attack inducing, wad of evil take home exam. You could safely describe us as antipaticos. I mean, take home exams are bad, but they usually aren't evil. It was soooo bad. How bad was it?

It was so bad that although I usually finish take home exams with an hour or so to spare so I can check my answers and make sure I've had a chance to cover everything I think is important, today I had to just stop typing at 4:20pm so I could turn it in on time. It was so bad that it took me almost two hours to read the exam and do the recommended background research before I could start answering the question. It was so bad that one of my friends had to take one of her panic-attack pills at 3pm when she realized she only had an hour and a half left. It was so bad that when I turned it in at 4:25, I was only the 8th to turn it in out of a class of 50. It was so bad that at 4:30 as I beat my head against the outside of the building over and over again until I lost consciousness I noticed not fewer than 5 classmates running across the quad to hand it in on time. It was so bad we didn't even want to talk about. Harvard kids, and we didn't even want to pick it apart sentence by sentence, like we did with everything else. It was so bad the Mormon kid suggested we all go get a beer and forget about it.

Ok, the Mormon kid didn't say that. But we did go get a beer to forget about it. And it was that bad.

Tomorrow I have one exam left. Just one. Only 2 hours long. I can do it. I can do it. I have seen the face of Satan, and I have survived. How bad could the last exam be?