Final Terror

Okay, so I'm forehead-deep in finals--just one exam left (on Friday), and I just finished my (possibly) most terrifying exam: Civil Procedure. Even though I've enjoyed the course and was really thankful to have had an engaging professor (as the topic could be horribly dry in the wrong hands), I have been scared to death about the exam, based largely on the deplorable grade I got on the midterm two months ago. (And, no, it wasn't one of those, "Boo hoo, I only got an A-" exams. It was more along the lines of "WHAT? Is that my PERCENTAGE? Do they GO that low?") Apparently, missing the issues, failing to manage time during the test itself, and thinking-you're-prepared-when-you're-really-not is not a winning combination.

So I've been scrambling to get a handle on things so that doesn't happen to me again. With the exam scheduled for early this morning (Monday), I've been spending some LONG days studying (which also means I've been spending days abandoning my wife in almost every one of her parenting hours of need).

Then, late Saturday night, as I was trying to cram in the last of my preparation before the Sabbath, my computer cord decided that, rather than work SOMEtimes and not others, it would like to at least be consistent, and it chose not to work AT ALL. Yes, that would be the computer that I would be using on the 4-hour exam. Yes, it's the one with the 45-minute battery life. Well, I wasn't happy about its decision, but despite a fair amount of friendly coaxing and an extreme amount of not-so-friendly threatening, I could not breathe any life into it.

So what was, up to that point, trepidation for the looming exam now became sheer terror. What would happen if I couldn't get it to work? What if I could get it to work, but then it died in the middle of the exam? Yes, they provide blue books, but I can't imagine doing the exam on paper. It takes so much longer to write things out by hand (and the teacher told us that we WOULD be pressed for time on the exam--guaranteed); plus, the computer allows you to change/edit things on the fly, which is critical if you miss something major and need to go back and put it in during the exam. Terror, I tell you. Abject horror.

Can you pray for computer cords? I hope so, because I did.

A lot.

Still, I couldn't get anything more than a flicker of life, and it would die (a) if the cord was budged at all, (b) if I blinked, or (c) for no reason whatsoever. All Sunday, whenever I thought about it, I prayed that it would go back to it's almost-always-functioning self (or even its sometimes-functioning-self). This morning--same thing. When I actually went in to take the exam, I plugged the cord in and...

...it didn't work.

Aaaaaaaaaaaargh! ("Do you hear that Fezzik? That is the sound of ultimate suffering. My heart made that sound when the six-fingered man killed my father. A desperate law student makes it now.")

In desperation, I wrenched the cord around--which I had tried, without success, for quite some time Saturday night--and suddenly, it came to life! I was intensely-but-cautiously happy and was careful not to touch it at all (or to let the planets align in the wrong way or to let the blood flow through my veins/arteries too loudly), and my power cord survived through my entire exam! No trouble whatsoever--no sign of its determination to slowly sap me of the last of my vitality.

It was such a relief.

Simple mercies--nothing earth-shaking in even the grand scheme of things, but a blessing nonetheless.

I'm grateful for that.

MOJ

Update (12/16--got a new power cord now. Phew! No more taking chances!)