One of the strangest things about taking the Texas bar exam this summer was that we couldn’t have any liquid whatsoever in the exam room. This was fine for the first half-day, but felt like a strangely cruel rule during the following 8-hour days of the exam.
No coffee?
Not even water?
Wasn’t this bad enough?
On the second day of the exam, a test-taker sitting next to me explained the lore around the “no beverages” rule: apparently one year someone spilled a drink on their neighbor’s computer, frying it, and condemning that student to hand-writing the rest of the exam. I was mortified but quickly forgot about that anecdote when we restarted the test.