The Failure Files: Volume 2

I never wanted to be a lawyer. As a matter of fact my entire life I wanted to be a journalist. I love writing, and in 8th grade announced that I would be Chris Berman when I grew up (which I gleefully told Chris Berman in person when I met him a few years ago but had to confess I wasn't him; I was just a civil servant). I majored in journalism, but I immediately fell in love with my political science courses. At the end of my freshman year I decided to add PoliSci as a double major. 

My course load was heavy, trying to earn two degrees. Early in my junior year I found I really wasn't enjoying journalism, and I dropped that major to focus on political science. I joined the debate team, filled with political science majors, and pondered what I was going to be when I grew up.

The middle of my senior year dawned, and I had no idea what was next. I applied to both law school and graduate school because I needed to continue my education to remain on my parents' health insurance (critical with my Crohn's Disease.) Early in my last semester of college I did an internship with the state legislature. The legislator I was working with encouraged me to go to law school saying the extra year would open up more opportunity. 

Despite having zero interest in being a lawyer, I took my place in the WVU Law Class of 2003. My Crohn's threw a wrench in my first year, and I had surgery in July (weeks before starting school) and again over Christmas break and spring break. People complain that their first year of law school is hard, but I argue that having three surgeries gives some real perspective.

I was quite sick my second year, and my (now) ex was stationed in Texas in the Army. My focus was half heartedly on law school. I did okay: mostly B's with a few C's or A's mixed in. But given my lack of dedication I wasn't too upset about those grades. 

In my third year I decided to move to Texas, and I visited at Baylor University. My credits would all transfer back to WVU as pass/fail, and that turned out to be unfortunate as I had my best grades of law school. Baylor has quarters instead of semesters, and I could only afford to attend two quarters. That meant I would graduate in August of 2003 (after taking summer classes) instead of May.

The university let me walk with my class in May, and I took three summer classes including a cross-departmental class with the history department where I wrote a comprehensive paper on the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall. 

I didn't want to practice law, and I think that made my law school experience more interesting in many ways and well-rounded. I took random courses that interested me and did things like writing a research paper through the history department. But because I didn't graduate until August I was not eligible to take the bar exam in July of 2003 with my classmates.

I was on the fence about taking the bar. I moved to Virginia in the fall of 2003. I worked for a sole practitioner attorney who specialized in patent law and enjoyed learning about that unique specialization. 

In the spring of 2004 I decided to take the Virginia bar exam that summer. I didn't go to law school in Virginia, so I would be learning brand new things that could be on the exam. I maxed out my credit card paying for BarBri, the most popular bar review course. I couldn't afford to not work, so I went to bar review classes in the morning and went to work in the afternoon. I went back to the condo I shared with my sister and brother-in-law and tried to study in the evenings. It went as well as you imagine. 

With my fam at our favorite neighborhood bar weeks before the exam. Studying hard.

A few weeks before the bar I interviewed for and was offered a job as Executive Assistant to the Mayor of Norfolk, Virginia, starting right after the exam. I was excited that I finally had full-time employment. I drove more than four hours to Roanoke, Virginia (where the exam was inexplicably held) and spent two days in their convention center taking the exam. The thing I remember most about that summer was the contrast of the frigid air conditioning in BarBri classes and in the exam itself to the humid Virginia summer. 

I started my job working for the Mayor and fell in love with working for a city. Fall rolled around and my bar results arrived. I'd failed...by two points. Two. Points. I discovered I could appeal it, and I did, hoping they'd find two points somewhere they could give me. An appeal was a long shot, and it didn't work. I'd failed...just barely.

I licked my wounds and decided who needed the bar? Yet a year later I felt the itch to take it again. It felt like something I needed to check off my accomplishments list. So the following summer, July of 2005, I decided to take the exam again. This time, however, I worked full time and used my BarBri study materials to study on my own. That went as well as you imagine. 

A fun work event a month before the 2005 bar. Studying hard.

That summer my boyfriend's sister was getting married in Michigan the weekend after the exam. He decided to join me in Roanoke, and we'd leave from there to head north for the wedding. I felt a lot of pressure the second day when he had to check out of the hotel and wait around for me. I've always been a fast test taker, but it says a lot about my mental focus when I hurried through the second day of the bar exam to get out of town. 

The fall of 2005 rolled around, and I failed the bar exam again. The spread was still pretty close, and I didn't bother appealing. Shortly after that I moved to Michigan, taking a job in the Michigan House of Representatives. I thought the bar exam was behind me. 

I loved working in the Michigan legislature, and I left after a few years to pursue lobbying like so many legislative staffers do. But the bar exam was still like an itch I couldn't scratch. Not having passed it felt like a complete failure. So in the summer of 2012 I decided I would take the Michigan bar exam.

For the record it was then nine years since I'd graduated from law school. I hadn't gone to law school in Michigan, and I was far removed from bar exam topics. I borrowed BarBri books from a colleague and studied on my own. That went as well as you imagine.

I remember at one point having an absolute meltdown about not being able to study enough. I was again working full-time and trying to study when I could. A good friend's husband was dying of cancer, and right after my meltdown she called needing support. I left my house to meet her at the hospital. I remember my husband saying, "Didn't you just freak out because you couldn't study enough?" And I said yes, but she needed me more. 

The week before the bar I attended a conference in Chicago, and I was trying to study on the Amtrak train back to Lansing with my colleagues drinking and talking around me. Needless to say I did not pass that bar exam.

I thought I was done. I really did. But in February of 2013 I decided to give it one more shot. That failure ate at me, and I couldn't figure out why other people who I thought weren't the sharpest could pass it but I couldn't.

I began studying in earnest for my fourth shot at the bar exam. It had been a decade since I graduated law school. I was still working full-time, but my study habits were much stronger. I was rolling along when tragedy struck my family: my husband's father died very unexpectedly at the young age of 57 a month before the exam.

I didn't study for several weeks. I was devastated. My husband was destroyed. The bar exam was not the priority in our life. I thought about not taking it at all, and my husband encouraged me to. I bombed it. 

Then I decided I was done with the bar. Four times I'd taken it, and four times I'd failed it. There are (or at least were) very few people who knew I'd failed it four times. I was embarrassed. I felt stupid. I felt like a failure. 

In the years since I've made peace with my inability to master the bar exam. As my brilliant friend in our mastermind group said, "Failure is uncovering the truth." The truth is I didn't care about the bar. I wanted to able to say I'd passed it, but I never, not once, dedicated the time and effort necessary to pass the exam. 

My friends who've taken the bar successfully basically quarantined themselves to study back before quarantine was a thing we all did. They didn't work full time or go to conferences or do much of anything but study.

All along I knew this truth: I was gainfully employed. Passing the bar exam would not make or break my career. It was a feather I wanted to put in my cap and that was it. I'm still embarrassed that I didn't pass it, but I now realize it's not because I couldn't pass it. It's because I chose not to make the effort required to pass it. 

I never wanted to be a lawyer. That's the truth.