Degrees and Anxiety

My final post before law school graduation, here, was a lofty, emotional outward reflection.

In truth, I wrote it for another reason as well. I was scared out of my mind of facing the bar exam. I mean, how do you prepare for a kick in the groin?

The evening before graduation, I had a great dinner with my good friend, Joel, who unknowingly reminded me how far I'd come in the years we'd known each other.

Graduation day was an encouraging closing of the door of four years that forever changed me and my wife. We had our first child, financial ups and downs, a 180 change of course in my career, and emotional challenges and victories all within a hellacious four year span.

Heather and some close friends of our decided to have a couples' night out after my graduation. I'll never forget what my close fiend Mike told me as we sat around the fire at the Greenhouse Bar: "It encourages me that there are still people like you, who are hungry to learn and take challenges." I was humbled that he thought of me that way. What a great way to end a day of celebrating accompishments!

December days passed, Christmas came and went. My bar exam schedule was staring me right in the face. I remember scrolling through my calendar, which took me through the middle of February, looking at everything that was to be completed. "How can I possibly do ALL this?!", I silently asked myself.

Anxiety of the amount of work involved over the next two months had officially set in. In the middle of this, some wisdom from a first year professor crept in. Our first year torts professor was a stickler for exactness and thoroughness. But in one of his more touching moments, he offered some great advice for first year students struggling to cope with a taxing study schedule. "Take it a week at a time. Never look at the syllabus in terms of what you need to study for the entire year. Simply focus on the week at hand".

I never forgot this advice throughout law school. And I will remember the calm that set in once I applied this to my bar review early on. I decided from the beginning of bar review that I would take it a week at a time.

Bar Exam Series

As many of you know very well know, I took the bar exam for Tennessee in late February. I decided early on to blog about the process, for a couple of reasons:

1. To help any future bar takers that happen to set foot upon my blog. Studying for the bar is by far the craziest emotional rollercoaster I've ridden. You can literally go from soaring confidence one day to feeling like there's no way you'll pass the next day. For those willing to join the ride, I'd like for you to have a front seat view.

2. Writing has a therapeutic effect, at least for me. While I refrain from treating these posts as  "venting" everyday problems, sharing valid struggles often opens the doors for others to admit that it's not easy for anyone if we're all honest.

3. I am purposely witholding several posts until I get the bar results. I have included some experiences and raw emotions that shouldn't be shared until I found out how I did.

I have broken my bar studying and taking experience into several chunks, often into weeks or days.
 I realize a lot of people's eyes glaze over when you begin to talk about anything legal, so if a particular post doesn't interest you, skip it and maybe the next post will suit your fancy.

That being said, let's go to the beginning, which begins at the end (of law school)...