Back-logged on Life

Allow me to express, without any hyperbole whatsoever, that preparing to take the bar exam was the most miserable and brutalizing intellectual experience of my entire life. Combine the condensed pain of three years of law school with the insecurity and self-loathing from all of junior high into a two-month, non-stop nightmare and you might get close to an experience like studying for the bar. In a word: excruciating.

And as of 4:45pm EST last Thursday, it was over. For now. Until November when “they” finally mail the results, a simple pass or fail. And I’ll just say this once and move on: there is a very real, all-to-palpable chance that I failed. At the present, the thought of going through all that again is more than I can bear. But luckily, right now, I don’t have to bear such a thought. Get back to me in three months.

The only thoughts I need bear these days are good ones – getting back to a life I had all but abandoned. The number of unreturned voicemails and emails I have to tackle is staggering and I am not even that popular. Suddenly it is okay again to think about getting freaking married in October. There are trips to take, other people’s weddings to attend, books to read, friendships to re-forge and a new apartment to move into. My “big fancy law job” starts the beginning of September, so somehow in the next month it might behoove me to figure out exactly what being a “big fancy lawyer” entails. Hopefully, it’s okay to be just a “regular old, run-of-the-mill lawyer” at first? That is so much more my style.

It is traditional, almost expected, that most bar-takers take a big post-exam trip in August before the “real world” catches up with them. Such trips are the talk of law school the entire last year. I know people going to every corner of the earth in the next month: Croatia, Bermuda, Australia, all of Europe, even a two-week safari through Zambia and Botswana. As for me? I’m hopping a plane to visit one of my dearest childhood friends in Seattle next week. There is nothing more exotic or wonderful than that, as far as I’m concerned. Europe is thousands of years old, it’s not going anywhere - but Annie won't be sitting still in Seattle much longer!

Having had only a week off between law school finals and studying for the bar, I have essentially been studying for a test(s) since the end of April. And given the whirlwind of the next few months (the new apartment, new job, and new husband), my life won’t so much be at a place called “normal” for some time. But maybe very soon at least I will be on the inside, once the 3am cold-sweat nightmares about the bar have subsided.