The California Bar Exam, Part 4

The morning of the bar you could feel the heaviness in the hotel. I peeked outside my door and saw one of the test takers doing stretches in front of his room. WHO CAN STRETCH AT A TIME LIKE THIS?

Having no idea what rush hour traffic was like in San Mateo, I gathered up my permitted items and headed off to the San Mateo Convention Center. They had us waiting outside, which was just fine. I absolutely adore the California morning marine layer. It was perfectly cool, I was wearing my favorite Tevas, my favorite jeans, and my law school sweatshirt. Someone from my law school stopped to say hi, but I actually didn't recognize him.

At that point, thanks in part to the delicious marine layer, I was fairly calm. At that point, there was nothing more I could learn. And by lunch time, my husband would have the report from the pediatric neurosurgeon about my son's skull.

When they opened the door, there were tables upon tables upon tables and lawn chairs set up at the tables in what looked to be more like an airplane hanger than a convention center. I happened to be seated in the very last row - right by the bathrooms. That's key right there when every second counts.

Some people were chatting to their friends. Most people were just sitting in silence.

After much delay, the proctor read every damn instruction in very slow monotone. "Take . . . your. . . number . . . 2 . . . pencil . . . and . . . gently . . . rip. . . apart. . . your. . . answer . . . book . . . being. . . careful. . . not. . . to. . . make. . . any. . . stray. . . marks. . .) I'm not even kidding. Everybody had the books open by the time she reached "take your."

Finally, we were off. The first topic was one of my strong ones and I spit forth all my key words in the allotted time and even managed to make a good strong essay along the way, just in case anybody ended up reading it. The second topic - THREW ME FOR A HUGE LOOP. It was all about a condo. A condo? Barbri had not covered condos. And in real life, I had just never had an opportunity or need to know what a condo really was. Do you own a condo? Do you rent a condo? It wasn't clear from the facts. Was this a landlord/tenant question? A property purchase question? I had no idea. I knew, time wise, I just had to pick. So I decided it was a property purchase question and moved on.

And then it was lunch - the cellphones we had mail ordered hadn't come in and I hadn't seen a pay phone anywhere along the road, so I had to rush back to the hotel to call my then-husband about our son's meeting with the pediatric neurosurgeon. Every red light felt like it was 5 minutes. There was so much traffic. When I finally made it to the room and got my husband on the phone, I didn't even say hello - it was just, "How is he?"

"He told us to go home."
"What?"
"The doctor looked him over for about 5 minutes, determined there was nothing wrong with his skull, and told us to go home."
"Oh my god oh my god. Oh. My. God."

And that's how the first day of the California bar exam came to be one of the best days of my life. I was downright giddy during the afternoon session.

The next day was the multistate. You hear it over and over and over again but the key here is to not fall behind timewise. I kept to a certain number of questions every 15 minutes and finished with enough time to go back over a few. And you hear this again and again too - don't go back and second guess yourself. So I went back and second guessed myself. I changed a few of my answers. Then I decided to cut my odds by not changing some of the other answers that I was seconding guessing.

The final day I was comfortable with all the topics and sailed threw it and I was so very very ready to be done. But the monotone proctor lady still had instructions for us at the end - "place . . . your . . . exam . . .." OH MY GOD LADY YOU ARE THE ONLY THING STANDING BETWEEN ME AND MY VERY VERY STRONG COCKTAIL.

Once set free by the slowest talking proctor lady ever, I spotted a TGI Fridays. They have bars in those - the drinking kind. I grabbed my credit card out of my regulation bar item baggie and ran in. The waitress asked me if I had just come from the bar (Goodness doesn't anything else happen in this town?) and I said yes and then she carded me. I asked her if she was serious, and she was. Which required me to go back out to my car and get my ID. Finally, I got my cocktail. It was just okay and I didn't even finish it because I realized that all I really wanted was bed.

53% passed the California bar that summer.

Tuesday - Epilogue.

The California Bar Exam, Part 3

(Monday, The Exam. Tuesday, Epilogue)

The earliest we could see the pediatric neurosurgeon was the first day of the bar exam. Without even asking my opinion (thankfully), my then-husband told me that I should still take the bar exam as planned because my being at the neurosurgeon wasn't going to change anything he might have to tell us that day.

Somehow, I managed to keep it together. I had yet to mourn my mom, my son was being evaluated for a deformity in his skull which could impact the growth of his brain, and my then-husband told me that he refused to talk to me (literally would not talk to me) because he was afraid that I was going to beg him to go back to Texas. A breakdown was in due order, but it was going to have to wait until after the bar.

I had heard that the bar graders were merely looking for key words, so I had my key words committed to memory. I have a photographic memory, so I could picture the words on the pages. I'm not sure that what I learned necessarily made any sense, or that I would actually be able to use all those legal concepts I was reviewing, but I could spit out hundreds upon hundreds of key words on cue.

I flew into San Jose and then drove to San Mateo. That was really the first time I truly felt the absence of my mom. She would have been on pins and needles waiting for me to call and tell her that I had made it to the hotel okay. But as it was, there was nobody that needed me to call them to tell them that I had arrived. My heart was incredibly heavy as I checked in at the front desk until the clerk told me that I had a delivery. My aunt had sent me some flowers.

The hotel and the diner where I was staying were left over from the 50s, untouched by any decor renovations. It was awesome. [It is now a retirement home, but the picture above is of the pool.]

I decided to review my notes out by the pool - except that everyone else staying at the hotel was also taking the bar exam and was out by the pool. I expected frenzied conversations and palpable stress around the pool, but that wasn't the case at all. Many of the people knew each other and they were just hanging around being mellow, swimming. This (1) stressed me out - either they were way more prepared than I was, or they were part of the 50% that was not going to pass, and (2) made me realize how much I love California.

Later, I moved to the diner attached to the motel. I had the place to myself - at least free of other test takers. There were some locals, and a kind waitress with a red hair beehive (also the real thing, straight from the 50s). The waitress asked me if I was taking the bar. I told her that I was, and she said, "Good for you girl." That made my day - a sort of sister solidarity thing.

Later that evening, I went on a search for Power Bars to take to the bar exam for lunch, read over my notes one last time, drove to the convention center so that I knew where I was going, and double checked the alarm clock. Tomorrow was the big day - my son was going to the pediatric neurosurgeon and it was the first day of the California bar exam.

The California Bar Exam, Part 2

Both my [then] husband and my aunt approached me about taking the bar at a later time. See The California Bar Exam, Part 1. That thought never occurred to me for even a moment because (1) I didn't want to lose my momentum, and (2) My mother would have been mortified if she thought that she had been the reason for me postponing the bar.

The pmbr multistate review course started the Monday after graduation. The course was held in a dilapidated sad hotel in the industrial part of town. The wallpaper was peeling in the ballroom, and the folding tables and chairs that they put out for us were in disrepair. It was all very depressing - where were the tablecloths and the pitchers of water and the little candies? Or maybe I was just sad because I knew that after the review course I would probably never see my law school classmates again. We had been through quite a lot together in the past few months.

The day after the pmbr class ended we were headed on our road trip/move out West. Indeed, I have never seen any of those law school classmates again.

For a brief moment at the start of the pmbr class I thought about panicking. Then I realized that was a time luxury that I could not afford. I also realized fairly quickly that the multi-state didn't test on the rule of law; rather, it tested on the exception to the rule of law. Then, if there was an exception to the exception, it tested on that. I also remember the proctor telling us to wear purple to the exam because it would provide good karma. Helpful. Very helpful.

After the pmbr course ended, I opened my schedule for the BarBri study-at-home California review course. (Yes, for the first time.) There wasn't a free day on the schedule. And the topics, some of which I had never covered in law school, were each allotted only two days of review. Accordingly, as we drove away from what I had known to be my home, the sweet sound of the California bar review course was playing on the car stereo.

The first night we stopped in Amarillo and I still had some of the day's review left to go. My then-husband curled up on the hotel bed with our son and called up a movie on pay-per-view. I was exhausted from everything and I wanted more than anything to take a break and curl up too. I knew, however, I couldn't get behind that early in the game.

When we finally arrived at our destination, I thought that I would study during the day while my son was asleep. After one morning of that plan I was on the phone to the nanny agency.

The nanny would show up at 8:30 and I would take my bar review materials to Starbucks. I would order a venti caramel macchiato - enough caffeine and sugar to get me through until a late lunch. Apparently, a bar studying person has a look about them because I can't tell you how many people came up to me and asked "Bar Exam?"

I shortly got into a groove where I only needed to hear something once before it was stored in my brain for its near-future use. Like the groove you get into 20 minutes into your run, my brain was functioning like a machine. After the nanny left in the afternoon I would spend some time with my baby, then when he went down at night I would study more. But I always took a break for the Daily Show. I had to get my news about what was happening in the real world somehow.

The spots for the bar exam were filling up quickly in the major cities, so I secured a spot in San Mateo and booked my flight to San Jose. I bought the non-digital time piece required for the California bar. I considered carefully the color of nail polish I should wear (while the comment about wearing purple was ridiculous, the color of your toenails for the bar exam is extremely important.) And, finally, I took my son to his new pediatrician for his latest round of vaccinations before I left for San Mateo. Whereupon the pediatrician said, "Has anybody told you that your son has craniostenosis? You need to have him evaluated by a pediatric neurosurgeon right away."

[He ends up being just fine - more about that in Part 3.]

The California Bar Exam, Part 1

My mother passed away and my son was born during Spring Break of my 3L year.

One of the benefits of law school is that it is a 3 year excuse from having to deal with anything in the real world. The following Wednesday I told my family that I was going back to class. I left my then-husband to deal with this small child that neither one of us knew how to work and I left my father to plan a funeral and I went off to class.

There, in class, everything followed the usual procedure and it was incredibly comforting to be sitting there. My return became, however, overwhelming - but I mean that in only the best way. Fellow classmates that I had never spoken to stopped me in the hall and said kind words. People that I had only just met in my classes that semester attended my mother's funeral and put together a baby shower in my honor. My law school classmates, the ones that were full of angst and suspicion and competition as 1Ls, ended up pulling together when it mattered.

I think I thanked all those people, but I honestly don't remember. What I did do, as a result of all that they did for me, was to make a promise to myself that I would never miss an opportunity to reach out to someone when I knew they were going through a tough time. I've said that I am going to do lots of things, but that's a promise that I really have tried to keep.

I wrote my final law school papers and studied for my final law school exams with my baby draped over my shoulder. I was the first one to finish my last law school exam. For a moment I sat there with my blue book and wondered whether I was done because I knew the subject matter really well, or if it was because I just wanted to be done. What I did know was that I didn't have the energy in me to go back through my exam. I turned it in and walked out the door. Law school was done.

There was only a week's break before bar review started. My ex's company was transferring us to California, so I ordered the study at home tapes from Bar-Bri for the California Bar.

There was one last hurrah before bar review - law school graduation. I felt like my mom was there, and my dad told me that he felt her standing right there beside him at the graduation ceremony.

My aunt flew into town and she took care of the baby so that I could go out and celebrate graduation. It had been almost a year since I had anything to drink. We all went out to a bar that was new since I had been a member of the going out scene. In the car on the way home I leaned over to the window and threw up. A couple of minutes later it occurred to me that I probably should have rolled down the window.

The next morning I resigned myself to knowing that those nights were over. I was a new mom and bar review started the next day.