Bearded for the bar

Daily Mugshot

Expensive Artwork

Today was my last day of work for about a month. While it will be nice to have loads of time to study, I will miss my job and seeing my friends from work. My study regime kicks into high gear this weekend starting with a quick recap and drill of torts. I feel I have a pretty good handle on this subject, and I did pretty well in this area in law school.

I also picked up a really expensive piece of art yesterday. I don't know how respected of an artist you need to be to garner tens of thousands of dollars for your work, but here is the piece I bought.

Lay it on!

Things are off and running here at bearded. I am about 44 hours into my experience sans shaving, and I am currently sporting what I would classify as Brillo® pad stubble. In yesterday’s photo, you could already start to make out my five o’clock shadow. The funny thing is, in past experiences when I did go without shaving for three to four days, the hair seemed to just get darker without really growing any longer. However, by this time next week I will already be in completely uncharted territory, so it should be fun to see how things develop.

I didn’t post any health data yesterday, and I probably will only do that very sporadically over the next several weeks. Fear not, I am keeping a daily log of this info and I have already secured help from a trusted friend to help out with some great graphs at the end of this project. One stat that was a little alarming yesterday was that my body fat apparently increased from 21.6% to 23.8%! I don’t know if I believe that is possible, and it is probably more likely that the machine I am using is of dubious quality. Regardless, there is something really alarming about having to say you are closer to one-quarter pure fat than only one-fifth.

One Step

Tonight the journey officially begins. Listed below you will find the baseline health numbers. I thought it would be interesting to express on a scale of one to ten the amount of stress I feel like I am under and then check that against what my blood pressure is telling me. From time to time, I will also place an H in the stress column to indicate whether or not I have had a headache that day. Having said this, here are today’s numbers:

Baseline Numbers	Studying	Stress	Blood Pressure	Weight	Body Fat
January 27, 2009	N/A	2(low)	124/84	210	21.6%

While I will not be posting this information on a daily basis, I will be tracking and recording it every day. After the bar is over, I plan to make a post that displays all of the data over the four week period. Tonight also marks what will be my final shave for the foreseeable future. You can watch the daily progress of my bar beard here.

Unexpected Transaction Costs

I felt compelled to link this story, which seriously makes me want to reconsider the entire profession all together. For all that is holy, why in the face?

Additional Challenges / Raison d'être

With tomorrow being the day shaving officially comes to an end, I wanted to take a few moments to go over some other goals/ideas for the blog over the next month. While the increased facial hair will be an interesting development for local acquaintances, I have also begun to wonder what toll the stress will take on my body over the next four weeks. Thus, I have developed some other variables to consider to get a more complete picture of how the bar exam can physiologically impact an otherwise healthy adult male.

Starting tomorrow, and updated at regular intervals, I will also keep a log of my weight, body fat percentage and blood pressure. The goal of course is to see if the increased stress from the bar causes me to lose/gain weight, lose/gain fat percentage or raise my blood pressure. As someone who gives blood like clockwork, I can confidently report that my blood pressure is usually very regular around the 120/80 range and that my body fat falls somewhere between fitness and acceptable.

The final goal for me will be to try and translate how I deal with the moments where the stress is the highest. At the end of this experiment, I hope to learn more about how I deal with pressure and stress. I also hope to have provided at least a very primitive model for how others might approach their date with the bar and manage the stress this event presents.

Tune in tomorrow for the first picture of the experiment and the baseline health numbers. It is going to be an interesting four weeks.

Growing My Bar Beard

The bar exam is generally looked at as one of the more grueling testing processes anywhere. Twice every year people all over the country gather in their respective states and take this three day exam. This year, I will join them as I sit to take the February 2009 exam in Columbus, Ohio.

My name is Mike Rodgers and I am a recent graduate of Capital University Law School in Columbus. I went to school as a part-time student in the evenings, while working a full-time job in state government. Law school for me was extremely challenging, and I often resented it because of the tremendous strain it put on my personal relationships. With the light rapidly nearing at tunnel’s end, I wanted to do something to help prepare me for the bar, and also to help me remember the end of this bitter struggle. Thus, the idea of the bar beard was born.

In order to best prepare myself for the exam, I have taken a leave of absence from my job from February 2nd to March 2nd. My job requires a suit and a clean and polished look, so I have basically been shaving on a daily basis for well over five years. As such, I have never tried nor allowed any facial hair of significance to accumulate on my chin or upper lip. With almost a month off of work, when will there be a better time to let nature takes its course and try to grow a really ragged beard?

Here are the rules:

I will not shave at all starting on January 28th and lasting until the end of the exam February 26th. On the night of January 27th, exactly four weeks before the start of the exam, I will shave one last time to make sure I am completely starting from smooth.

I will not be allowed to shave, trim or otherwise cut any of my facial hair until the end of the third day of the exam on Thursday, February 26th.

I will capture a headshot daily and post it here to show the progress of my beard.

That’s the first part of the challenge, check back soon for the second.