The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Darcy: Graduating from law school is an odd thing--you don't really feel like you've accomplished anything because the bar exam looms like a 600-pound gorilla.  For the last two months, I've been sitting in class, writing essays, and outlining 17 different areas of law.  The grading standard is "minimum competence", which means that you need to know a little about a lot.  In other words, preparing for the bar exam is not substantively hard but it does require a great deal of time.  

At this point, I just want to start the exam and get it over with, but I have to wait until Tuesday. I keep saying to myself, "A week from this moment, I'll be done with 1/3 of the exam" or "A week from now I'll be done!!" and that mentality makes me even more anxious.  On Thursday, July 26, at about 11 a.m. I'll be leaving the exam room and the entire ordeal will be over!

When the exam is over, I plan on getting a nice pedicure, chopping my hair off, and starting a triathlon training plan.  Results from the bar are not distributed until 71 days after the exam (sometime in October).  When I worry about failing, I remind myself that I don't want to be a lawyer.  I'm taking the bar to have an extra tool in my belt in the event that I need to do temp work until I find the right policy job.  The bottom line is that if I do fail, my pride is the only real victim.  That being said,  I won't fail because I feel like I can write something about everything--I can fake it until I make it.  

Ok, thanks for the therapy.  As a final note, let me just say that the money you spend preparing for the bar is unbelievable.  The prep course is a little under $2000, the exam fee is about $500, and if you plan to use a computer you have to pay $120 as a "registration fee" to download the appropriate software.  The expenses don't end there--many test takers are renting a hotel room for three nights so they can avoid traffic.  I'm not going that far, but we are boarding Soma for three nights because I need to be up and out the door between 6-6:30 in the morning.  Of course, there's parking, food, and other miscellaneous expenses.   The cost is another motivator for passing the exam the first time.  Cost aside, you need to spend money to make money, right? In the end, it's all worth it and next week at this time I won't care about the money!!