The fucking cold gray dawn broke over the pink cloud of newly-blooming cherry trees. (Yeah, that's a bit of an incongruous image, but that's what happened. Dissonance rules.) I've gotten about 4 hours' sleep after studying last night and have drunk approximately 12 cups of coffee in the last 24 hours. I proceed to drink 3 more. I depart, glancing idly at the empty swimming pool while clutching my arms around my ribs for warmth, wondering whatever possessed me to bring a bikini. I cross a frozen wasteland called El Camino Real Boulevard. The San Mateo Expo Center is a couple of large beige rectangular buildings with a series of arched windows near the roof, kind of like WWII aircraft hangars revisited in 60s Modern. I approach with resolute step, clutching 6 pens--black and blue (in more ways than one)--and tying a new knot in my kamikaze headband.
The Japanese imagery, and my wildly-wired state of mind, remind me of a really exciting flight I once took out of Dutch Harbor in a 12-seater plane during the winter. The wind was so bad that the airport terminal kept shaking, and you couldn't see out of the windows because of the spray from the raging ocean. We would never have taken off if two of the passengers hadn't been a kid who needed to go to Anchorage to have his appendix removed and a crab fisherman who got his arm mangled in gear. Even in his morphine-sedated state, the fisherman kept asking the EMT: "But isn't the weather really BAD?!" Anyway, after we shot up off the runway at full throttle, the plane gave a sickening lurch, toward one of the countless dark mountains that loom abruptly along the coasts of the Aleutian Islands, and I clutched the armrest of my seat. At least I didn't scream, like the girl behind me. The Japanese surimi inspector in the seat across the tiny aisle stared at me with utter contempt from behind huge, thick black-rimmed glasses, like: "If
you want to make an idiot of yourself in the last moments of your life, you
are an idiot.
I will die with dignity."
Back at the San Mateo Expo Center, in the fucking cold dawn, frost glittering on the grass, I sit on a red park bench by the wall of the building and worry because I don't have a plastic bag. I notice that everybody else is carrying their pens in baggies. Having actually read the instructions for taking the exam, I can't believe I missed something so important. When a proctor comes out with plastic bags and starts asking people if they need one, I'm relieved that I'm not losing my mind and that I relied on the instructions, which said bags would be provided. (For all I know, they're special bags that explode if you put notes or alarm clocks in them.) I stride directly across the grass to the proctor, claim my bag, and return to my place on the bench in the sun. The grass is soft underfoot. My pink Converse sneakers leave a clear trail of mud back to the bench from the lawn. This trail remains there throughout all 3 days of the Bar exam. In later years, it will become known as "The Track of the Phantom Law Student."
They open the doors. Inside, the floor is concrete, the walls are taped sheetrock, and the huge room is filled with lines of dark brown tables. The chairs are white plastic patio chairs, which adds a kind of Long Island lawn party atmosphere to the proceedings. It occurs to me that this room is going to remain unheated, but since about 1000 people will be sitting in it, all steaming with anxiety, I believe that it'll be warm enough.
The proctors distribute the exam books, in pastel colors. Yellow, green, and blue, if I remember correctly. At those words, "YOU MAY BEGIN," I break the seal and read the fucking questions with the speed of Yeager breaking the sound barrier. Questions 2 and 3--Contracts and Corporations--are fairly straightforward. Question 1 is Constitutional Law, my worst subject, the one I've been dreading will be on there. The question calls for an analysis under 4 clauses of the Constitution, and, incredibly, blood racing through veins, I can only recognize 3 of the clauses. I begin writing, anyway, hoping the last one will hit me. It doesn't. I proceed to take a stab in the dark, choose a point of the Constitution which I at least know exists, and write an answer based on that, hoping the grader will give me some credit for analysis even though I've stated a rule which I am 99% certain is not the rule for the clause in question. I'm also writing in block caps, because my handwriting is eccentric. I deal with Questions 2 and 3 and spend the leftover time adding afterthoughts to the Constitutional Law answer, just trying to get any more crumbs of points.
At lunch, several of us wait by the clanging red-and-white-striped signals as a stark metal doubledecker CalTrain speeds by, gray-bearded dwarf engineer peering through the front window like the Nome King. "Hey," I said. "It can't be
that bad-- None of us threw ourselves under it."
Having taken the Baby Bar (First Year Law Students' Exam, the equivalent of the Bar exam but covering only first-year law subjects), I'm familiar with essay exam questions and multistate (multiple choice answer) questions. I have never, however, taken a performance test. I looked through a review workbook in preparation, but I'm still apprehensive about the unknown. The test turns out to be writing a settlement letter to a plaintiff's attorney, as if you were the attorney hired by an insurance company to represent the defendant. In real life, my boss specializes in insurance defense and class action defense. I heave a deep sigh of relief and actually smile, although feeling far from over-confident, since there are a lot of issues to cover. I cover them. When I go home, I feel pretty happy, all things taken together. I crack open a Sapporo and lie limp on the bed.
Then I get out my Constitutional Law review to see what that fucking clause was that I couldn't remember, and discover that I've mixed up the last 2 clauses. The first 2 clauses are okay, but the 3rd one, the one I thought I remembered, was actually the 4th one, the one I thought I couldn't remember, and consequently my analysis for the 3rd clause should have gone under the 4th clause.
I remind myself that this one question counts for only 1/15th of the total Bar exam score, and that that's why the exam is so long-- so you can make up when you fuck up. Nonetheless, I feel depressed. I make another foray out and buy some Beck's.
