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Bar Exam: Run Through The Line

Do. Not. Stop.

This is the final weekend before the fun and games we call the California Bar Exam. Three days of bliss. First, a day of reading and writing, then a day filled with lots of coloring in of circles (staying inside the lines is very important... maybe even more important than the actual answer if my conspiracy theories about the Bar trying to kill our inner child are correct), and finally, a third day of more reading and more writing. And then... we wait till November to find out if we're official and certified.

As Jack Handey explains about his first day in Hell:

To relieve the boredom, you can throw rocks at other people in line. They just think it was a demon. But I discovered the hard way that the demons don’t like it when they’re beating someone and you join in.

It’s odd, but Hell can be a lonely place, even with so many people around. They all seem caught up in their own little worlds, running to and fro, wailing and tearing at their hair. You try to make conversation, but you can tell they’re not listening.

Yet we're almost at the end of our effort. We'll be able to rest in a week. The finish line is in sight, and most everyone I've talked to is daydreaming about vacations and couches and books and movies and escaping to the woods where silence prevails, the light isn't provided by fluorescent bulbs, no fact patterns present themselves for you to decide who can sue and why, and the Internet cannot find you.

Fatigue and boredom are also setting in. We've been reading over the same material for the better part of two months, all day every day. Everything we'll need next week is packed into our brains somewhere, and our only problem now is pulling it back out on command.

Those who keep their brains tabbed and color coded and cross-referenced based on terms of art and approaches to essays are double and triple-checking to make sure that everything is where it should be, that their mental files are complete and accurate.

Those who prefer a more... artistic... approach have created giant piles of information in their brains. Though you or I would just see a gigantic mess, they know exactly where everything is. Replevin? In that pile over there, behind that time they shoplifted on a dare in middle school, got caught, and had to give back that bag of Cornnuts. They tried to tell the guy that they brought it in, but the bag was tagged with the store's sticker price. No dice. See? Replevin: a remedy for the return of specific personal goods upon breach of contract. Easy. Now, the trick is just to make sure that they remember where everything is in those mountains of information. And also, of course, to make sure that Nothing. Moves. Gotta take it easy for the next couple days. Can't add more. Can't vary from routine. All is balanced, all has found its place. Delicate? Precarious? Zen.

Those who started studying late are now in a rush, short-term memory cracked open wide, shoveling madly to cram everything into their suddenly overflowing heads, no time to talk, gotta skim through this outline and see more essays and do 100 multiple choice a day and no time to learn Professional Responsibilty and damnit I'm out of coffee!

And those who have prepared every day, who put in the work during their three or four years in law school and know the material, are comfortably reviewing. Ennui has set in, but persistence prevails. The key now is to not panic. To sleep and eat and remember and think. It's just a trade exam after all. 76% of first time takers pass. They're tired, but they'll do fine.

Me? I'm writing this blog post, Silly! And I'm remembering lessons learned when I was 16 and 17. At football practice...

We'd end each practice with either wind sprints or what Coach Buzz called "perfect plays." For perfect plays, we'd line up on offense and defense and run a simple play over and over till every single person on the field did their job perfectly. We were tired, but if anyone slacked, pulled up before Coach blew his whistle, slipped, misstepped, or anything else, we had to line up and do it again. And again. And again. If we ended with wind sprints instead of perfect plays, Coach made sure we ran through the end line. Anyone pulls up early, we run another. You get the idea. And it turns out that it's really easy to tell when when people aren't giving their all, so we ran a lot.

But something happened with these drills. First of all we, as a team, learned not to get mad at each other when someone slipped. Sure, it sucked that everyone had to do over, but the slipper felt embarrassed and guilty already. No need to waste energy yelling, no need to make others self-conscious. Better to focus on yourself. And second, we learned that effort matters. That we have it in each of us to decide, when we're tired and worn out and don't think we can keep going, to step back, reset, and work harder. Running through the line is never about being tired or feeling strong. It's more basic. Running through the line is about making a simple decision before you get started, and about reminding yourself of that decision whenever temptation stands in your way. No matter what, you're not going to slow down until after you're done. You're not going to stop. You're going to run through that line.

And that's what I'm doing now. Back to the books.

[Photo by thejesse, used under a Creative Commons license.]