Note: Our regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly. This is an anecdote which has nothing to do with transport or housing.
If you don't know, to become a lawyer, you have to pass the Bar Exam, and it's been in the news that the latest California bar exam has been a clusterfuck. This doesn't surprise me at all, because the California Bar just doesn't give a shit. They didn't care when it was 54 degrees inside a test center or give anyone a break when an earthquake hit in the middle of the exam. Nope, keep writing, they said.
I've got my own story of Bar incompetence here, too. Let's go back to 2011, where I and 1000 of my closest friends have gathered in the Sacramento Convention Center to sit the bar exam. Sacramento is hot as hell in late July, and the temperature is in the 90s. The convention center A/C is set to "antarctic winter" mode, and all of us are freezing our tails off. I take my seat. (I'm sitting behind some douchebag wearing a U.C. Davis Law Review hoodie with his name custom-embroidered on the hood.)
The exam starts. There's the usual stuff I expected to deal with: people having crying fits, throwing up, anxiety attacks, and so on. No surprise there: the California bar exam is legendary for its difficulty. (The dean of Stanford Law School, vice-president Kamala Harris, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and four-time governor Jerry Brown all failed at least once.)
But I did not expect to deal with Christian music blasting through the convention center. It wasn't, like, Bach. Or even gospel. It was awful contemporary Christian pop music that sounded like off-brand NSync impersonators. "Oh, hell," I think. "What is the Bar thinking? They can't seriously be piping religious music through the speakers during the bar exam, right?"
Turns out the Bar had booked the Sacramento convention center at the same time as a religious revival. Thus, for two of the Bar days, we're treated to grade-Z Christian pop, punctuated by sermons from fire and brimstone preachers, because nobody at the Bar had thought to check the schedule.
I know a couple of the takers petitioned to get their exams rescored because of the disturbance, but I don't think anything ever came of it.