Hey there. My experience was much like yours. A little practical advice: First, get the computer-based bar prep course (MicroMash, as I recall) unless you are already in a class. The classes would probably have helped me by making me show up at a certain time, but in their absence, the computer-based quizzing was invaluable, and also helped me know how close I was to pass-worthy.

Second, don't settle into a job until you find your place. Very cliche, I know. I just barely scraped by on my bar exam. So, when I wasn't very good at my first job, I figured that fit. But then I jumped rather impulsively for a public defender position, which turned out to make me feel--tada!--smart again. It was wonderful--my strengths showed and my weaknesses were minimally noticable. I even got the praise I badly needed. So hunt around until you find your place.

Good luck.

Mr. Kamiya, I just wanted to compliment you on a finely written essay. You put a handle on the amorphous, which is one of the top reasons good writers are valuable to the rest of us. I'll be able to think about these issues more clearly now thanks to your careful work. Thanks.

The tagline to this article indicates that the article is about the use of buxom adolescents in statutory rape PSA's. In fact the article is about the use of images juxtaposing children's heads onto adult bodies. This is more strange and interesting than the tagline suggests.

You seem to avoid putting your finger squarely on the uncomfortable implication of this and similar studies. You point out that this doesn't mean that women want to "settle down" with triad men. You point out that triad men are generally more aggressive in seeking sex with women. Given, and given--but the bothersome part is that their "more aggressive" method apparently works better than the ways nice guys try, at least for getting sex.

I have to admit--when I was a single nice guy, it made me angry to see the gap between what my female friends always said they wanted, and what they apparently reacted to. I was sure as hell trying to have sex, with little success. Empathy, kindness, sensitivity--I was told, and believed, that that was what women were looking for. Without at least occassional narcissistic behavior, a guy apparently had no spice to their palate. It actually felt like betrayal--like I had been groomed to be a good friend, and only a good friend, because I believed women I knew when they described the desires they thought they ought to have, instead of the desires they really had. Maybe that's why I'm responding to this report. Maybe I am still a little pissed over an unnecessarily lonely decade back then.

Of course, there are a lot of ways that lack of honesty with ourselves and others hurt people. But this is one of them. I have observed, though, that the same women that crave those guys at 20 reject them at 30 or so. At 33 now, I'm sitting pretty with a lovely lady. I wonder what the experiment would find if they raised the age a decade or two.

You may be interested to know that there is a short story written about this very subject. Cory Doctorow wrote "Anda's Game" to explore the economics and ethics of gold farming, and of other people's responses thereto. It's a good little read. The story is downloadable in a variety of free formats at http://craphound.com/overclocked/download/. Don't worry--the author himself put them there for free download.

A brief comment on those who go around killing gold farmers because it diminishes their game experience: People doing this for less than $150 per month in poor countries need that money. Gold farming can be excruciatingly boring. Obviously, it is the best way available to them to earn money, and just as obviously, the people who buy gold from the farmers don't really need the money they spend. As some gold farmers might be subsistence gold farmers, it seems pretty coldhearted to kill their characters and thereby hurt their means of earning a little much-needed income just because you don't like the effect it has on your gameplay. What do you think?

Some here have said that only people already stupid and racist will believe these emails anyway. I disagree. I have in my family a good number of reasonably intelligent, or at least not stupid, people who don't follow the news very carefully. Because they haven't been to a college with a black studies or a sociology major, they have no context in which to understand why Michelle Obama would have written a thesis about black-white relationships. It therefore seems plausible to them that she's got serious race loyalty issues.

Similarly, where I live there are virtually no visible Muslims. Lots of Mennonites, Amish, and the like, but no Muslims. The only Muslim they've seen on TV more than once or twice is Bin Laden. So the Muslims = terrorists falsehood is an easy sell for them.

The relatives of whom I speak are people who want, and try, to be good and fair people. And they usually are. It is their ignorance of certain matters--not racism--has made them prone to believe these emails. And often they do. That's why these emails are so @#$%! frustrating for me.