It can get worse

The maintenance guy came out of my bathroom at 11 PM on Saturday and told me my toilet was broken (no crap) and that he couldn't fix it. When I asked what I should do he said, "Well, do you have a big pot or pan?"

I knew right then that this wasn't going to end well. He meant, of course, a big pot to dump water into the bowl to get it to flush from the water pressure; my toilet is old-school, and some valve went bad (and no, I didn't stop it up). To fix it, they were going to have to replace the whole toilet or replace the hard-to-find valve, but both would require shutting the water off in my entire 6-story building. I tried to be cheerful about it, even on Sunday when maintenance guy's boss didn't make the appointment to come look at the toilet.

The toilet didn't break me. It was the roaches. The roaches?! Yes, the roaches. Last week I got a call saying they were going to exterminate in my apartment because of "an infestation." Gross, I thought, with not a little bit of haughtiness. I'd never seen a roach in my place and assumed that it was someone else's filth that caused the problem, and that my extermination was just a preventive.

You know the phrase "pride cometh before a fall"? Well, it stings a little right now. I started actually seeing roaches in my place the day of the extermination, and so I armed the crevices with killer motels and stalked the place with an ever-present can of RAID. But they kept coming. I remained steadfastly sane (well, that's a slight exaggeration) and took comfort in my friends' assurances that roaches come out after extermination "to die." Some at my hand.

Sh!t hit the fan on Sunday. For lunch I made some homemade mac and cheese. For dinner I ate the same, but when I nuked it, it was too hot. I left it on the counter to cool and used the restroom. Of course, it took me five bleeping minutes to fully flush the toilet (and about 15 gallons of water-- not that I counted), and when I returned to get my dinner I found two roaches. They appeared to be considering whether they should or should not jump into my bowl of cheesy goodness. I was considering if I should off them or myself. I chose them. Then I scoured the kitchen, looking for more of the bastards to drown in RAID. Then I cleaned like a frenzied housewife. There were tears, and very real sorrow for having to throw out my precious mac and cheese. I'd snapped.

Normally at this point I'd dig through my lease, read up on some landlord-tenant law in Missouri, and cruise the board of health's website for something to get the jerks running this show (my school by the way). Armed with info, I'd send a letter politely acknowledging that I wasn't some idiot consumer and then saying something about expecting things to right themselves, but without sounding prickish. But there was no time-- Monday I had an exam in my weakest subject, from my hardest professor and the one I was most eager to please (for the moment at least-- I find I'm most eager to please the professor whose exam I have next). I shot off a justifiably angry-but-not-crazy email to maintenance and went back to cramming and looking around the room for pests in paranoid fashion.

Today I got a call from the recipient of my nastygram (I really did try to be nice in it) saying they were going to re-exterminate my place-- the day of my last exam, a take-home which I was planning on actually taking home-- and they were going to fix my toilet this morning. When I left for my Monday exam they were still at work on the john, but I felt comforted. As I should, right? And the roach problem was from some icky dude, but I was assured the problem was being handled. No need to go Rambo-vigilante on my neighbors to find the SOB who's compromising my home, humble as it may be. Things were getting done.

Okay, pseudo-crises resolved and onto what I came here to do: kick tail on exams (or, alternatively, how to sort of learn how to be a lawyer, but not all the way because law schools think that's too simplistic). Monday's exam was a 3 hour trial with 4 questions. #3 was supposed to be substituted by a new #3 in the packet. I took the exam, but there was a particular law by which I was completely baffled, so afterward I broke etiquette and asked the guy in front of me about it (who seems really good at law school). What? he asked. He had no clue what I was talking about, and he looked like he was going to cry. Frick! He asked someone else about it, and that guy shrugged. Double frick! Did I answer the wrong question? I headed to the registrar's office to see if I could just find out what I did. I decided that if I messed up I certainly deserved it for not reading my exam properly; I am, after all, a grown person capable of reading and writing exams, and should account for my mistakes. The registrar was much more sympathetic than I expected-- apparently my professor made the change at the last moment, and some students answered the wrong question and others didn't do the 4th question because he'd mentioned in class that there were going to be 3 total. This is a nice mess. Should the question be thrown out? Which one? What about the people who wrote the exam properly-- should they be penalized by taking out anything? I started to cry (again). A fraction of my life depended on that score. Summer jobs are hard to find for 1Ls, and I needed to score grades to make it out of the proverbial Pile-- looks aren't going to do it.

It turns out I did answer everything as I should have, at least from a procedural standpoint. But by the end that was little comfort! I've been crazed from the subject, crazed from a bleeping roach infestation, and crazed from a superbleeping toilet that won't bleeping flush. Grades for a semester based on single exams? Hey, bring it on. "Problems at home" on top of everything else? It was too much for this mouse (ugh, hopefully don't have those too).

Now I'm spent. I have one more exam in my best subject, and I secretly wish it were tomorrow. Hopefully my roof doesn't cave in or my cat get a rare form of rabies and attack me in the middle of the night... but if I were a betting man, I wouldn't put my money on me this week.

I'll be back next week after exams, driving home, and a daunting amount of job search stuff. I'll have other stuff to talk about besides school... like not being in school. For three weeks. I'm drooling in anticipation already!