Hoppy Easter

Bonjour, gentle readers. Hope your Easter holiday was spectacular.

I've been laying low for the past couple weeks as my in-laws have been in town and staying with us since March 7. This was their first visit out to San Diego since we moved, and over the past three weeks we've had some combination of Jack's mom, dad, and grandfather crashing in our guest room and/or couch, plus visits from two great uncles and a great aunt. If I'm not mistaken, we have a cousin and three of his kids popping into town to check out colleges for two days beginning tomorrow. March has been quite the family affair!

We managed to take Cris and John to almost all of our favorite San Diego restaurants and they've been kind enough to treat us to some fantastic dinners. During their stay they checked out Julian, Old Town, Torrey Pines Reserve, and Coronado. Cris spent some time in OC while John rode his Harley up the coast (he intended to get to Oregon but rain prevented him from getting too much farther north than San Francisco). They caught a movie, spent some time by the pool and at the gym, and took Mason on a lot of long walks. All in all they seemed to have a relaxing time and we certainly enjoyed getting to spend some time with them.

The trip culminated today in my first ever solo holiday meal. And let me tell ya, cooking a massive Easter feast for your in-laws is an intimidating project. I got up at 8am today to start the Easter ham and I think I spent the entire rest of the day cooking (in the interest of full disclosure, three hours in the middle of the day were spent laying by the pool with Cris, cooking my own skin, which is now a nice shade of hot pink and quite painful). Over the course of the day I made an egg casserole, orange muffins with brown sugar glaze, ham roasted in apple cider, carrot souffle, creamy potatoes au gratin, a spring spinach salad, deviled eggs, dinner rolls, and peach crisp with maple cream sauce for dessert. No one got sick and they at least all pretended to like it, and I think it was pretty damn good if I do say so myself, so I'm going to consider my first foray into the world of holiday meals to be a success.

Part of the Easter spread. Not too shabby, eh?

Here are a couple pics of our goings-on with the fam:

This is today--Easter. Gotta love self-timers on cameras. John and I have both been photoshopped so as to appear less lobster-like. Prior to the editing there was no discernible line between my pink tank top and my skin. Mason's tail makes an appearance in the lower level corner.

Me and Cris at sunset on Ocean Beach.

Me, Jack, Great Aunt Joyce, Great Uncle Christian, Cris, Great Uncle Oscar and Grandpa Jack at C Level.

Grandpa, Cris, Jack and me at The Linkery. And yes, I know I look like a tool because I'm in a suit in these pictures when everyone else is dressed in normal clothes, but welcome to my life.

The Best Wedding of 2007--Is It Us?

Let's get a few things straight:

• I am obsessed with my own wedding pictures. I will take any excuse I can get to show them off.
  
• Amanda Collins is, hands down, my favorite wedding vendor and I worship her for capturing such breath-taking images of our day.
• During my wedding planning, I was 100% obsessed with theknot.com. To this day, I credit it for many of my ideas and I think it is, quite possibly, the best wedding planning resource available to brides today.

It just so happens that The Knot is running a little contest for the best Real Weddings of 2007. At stake is a photo spread in The Knot magazine and a safari trip for two to Africa. I may be a bit biased, but I'd like to think that our Jamaican nuptials are worthy of the title.

Click here to check out the seven images we submitted to the competition. Alternatively, you can search for our wedding within the Knot's Real Weddings contest site--the title of our entry is "Jamaican Me Crazy" or you can search by my first name. And if you're so inclined, Jack and I would be honored to have your vote. It only takes two seconds to pop in an email address and create a password, and we'd love you even more if you'd take the time to do it!

Thanks a million! :)

PS Our friends Emily and Phil also submitted an entry for their Bahamian wedding. Click here to check out Em's beautiful pics!

Second Engagiversary

I'm only about 10% Irish. Jack is pretty much all Italian. Until a couple years ago, our only real reason for celebrating St. Patrick's Day was that I get into any holiday that comes with fun costuming requirements and we both really like beer. But then, on St. Patrick's Day 2006, during a big drunken bash at our house, Jack proposed to me. St. Patrick's Day 2007 was our engagement party. So these days, the holiday known for green beer, leprechauns, Guinness and "kiss me I'm Irish" tee-shirts has kind of a special place in my heart. I've become such a fan of St. Pat's in the past two years that I now have more kelly green tops, sweatshirts and baseball caps, and shamrock-adorned socks and panties than I could ever possibly find someplace to wear.

Minutes after Jack proposed.

Getting tipsy with Holly at the engagement party.

We're cute.

I can't say that we're really doing anything all that special for our second engagiversary given that it's a Monday and we both have to work. But I'll still be wearing a green shirt under my suit and stealing glances at the gorgeous rock on my left hand that two years later I'm still as enchanted with as I was that first night he slipped it on my finger.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone! Irish car bombs all around!

Honored

When one of your girlfriends is about to be a bride, there is often no greater honor than being asked to stand up next to her on her wedding day. Whether you're a sister, a childhood friend, a cousin, a classmate or a roommate, knowing that the bride regards you as one of the most important women in her life and that your friendship means so much to her that she wants you standing right behind her when she speaks the most important vows she'll ever say is one of the kindest compliments you could hear.

I think a lot of girls see it as an obligation. There's a dress to buy, showers to throw, parties to plan, gifts to purchase and reception favors to assemble. For a span of years in your twenties when it seems like all your friends are getting married, you may find yourself having your measurements taken and your hair twisted into the perfect wedding day up-do a couple times a year. But for me, the honor never gets old and I've never felt the slightest sense of burden.

As a recent bride myself, I can say that I took the task of selecting my bridesmaids very seriously. I could easily have had eight or more, but because we had a destination wedding and having that many bridesmaids would have meant that there were more people standing next to me than seated in the chairs, I had to keep the number as low as reasonably possible. In the end I had five gorgeous women (our photographers commented that the six of us could have been a Colgate commercial) comprised of my husband's sister, my best friend from high school, my college roommate, my closest girlfriend from law school and one of my favorite friends from college (whom Jack happens to regard as a close friend of his as well). I know the time and expense for each of them to buy their pretty aqua silk dresses and fly to Jamaica was probably on the high side as far as weddings go, but they may never know how much it meant to me to see the five of them standing there together on my wedding day.


Like a lot of girls do, back in college Tara and I always kind of abstractly talked about how we'd be each other's maid of honor someday. Nevertheless, she still teared up when I handed her the card I'd had made with a picture of us on the front and a little poem asking her to be my maid of honor inside. Last Tuesday night I finally understood why.

After a long day at work and dinner with the in-laws, I came home to find a bouquet of cream-colored calla lilies in a vase on my counter. The weekend before, Tara had told me she decided on callas for her wedding, and that she wanted the bridesmaids to carry white and she would carry orange and yellow. I didn't need the card to tell me why she'd sent them, but even though I had an idea what it might say and had probably known for about ten years that this was a question she might someday ask, I was no less touched.

The card read:

Rach, I'd love to see you carry these flowers at my wedding. Will you be my Matron of Honor? Love, T.

Not surprisingly, I teared up. I wished I could have hugged her and told her how much it meant to me, but from 1800 miles away I decided the only fitting way to respond would be to send flowers back to her. So two days later Tara received sunset-colored calla lilies with a card that said:

I'd be honored. Love, Rach

It probably goes without saying that I feel ridiculously excited, blessed, thankful, special, loved and...well, honored. Tara is going to make a stunning bride and it means the world to me to know that I'll be standing right next to her when she and Craig say "I do."

Welcome to the World, Brenna Elsie!

On Wednesday, March 12, 2008, at 1:09pm CST, the world was introduced to its newest angel...Brenna Elsie. This little princess is the daughter of the beautiful, dynamic, incredible woman I call my best friend, though I think most people probably just call her Holly. :)

Holly and I have been friends since we were about 14 years old, so she's officially been a part of my life for almost half my years on earth. I am fairly certain we met at church, but in the past decade and a half we have probably done a few things we wouldn't have wanted Pastor Don to know about. We were co-captains of the dance team and the volleyball team. We danced in Super Bowl XXXII together. At various points in our lives we managed to convince people we were sisters, and even twins, and I distinctly recall one day in high school when her boyfriend saw me from the back, mistook me for her and gave me a big squeeze. Holly was the first friend to ride in my first car, she was the first person to know I lost my virginity, and she was the first person I told when I got engaged. I was the maid of honor in her wedding and she was the matron of honor in mine. In the early summer of 2002 when Holly was in the hospital on bed rest with her first pregnancy, I remember sitting there with her trying to ease the boredom. And when her twin boys, Aiden and Andrew, we re born in July 2002, I was in her hospital room as soon as they'd let me through the door.

Being so far away from her this time around was terribly hard, but thanks to modern technologies like text messaging I got updates every step of the way. Starting at nearly 2am CST onWednesday morning when she called to tell me she was on the way to the hospital, she was the first thought in my mind. Eleven hours later when I got the news that a six pound, six ounce, 19 inch long (but still nameless) bundle of wonderful had arrived, I am fairly certain I told every single person who would listen. At about 6pm tonight I got the word that the baby had officially been named: Brenna (because Holly just liked it) Elsie (after Michael's grandmother).

I know from having watched Holly raise her boys over the past five and half year s that she is truly one of the most amazing moms I've ever known (perhaps second only to my own). Her patience and compassion are downright angelic at times, so it's no surprise that she is well-suited to her job as a pediatric nurse. When you combine that ki nd of ex per ience and understanding with the excitement and energy from Brenna's firefighter dad, Michael, you have to believe that this baby is in the hands of people who will take good care of her.

Holly and Michael, I simply cannot wait to meet your little princess. Congratulations!!

Snow Bunny

It's been 13 days since I walked out of that fateful test. Although I'm still waking up in a cold sweat at about 5am every morning after yet another bar exam nightmare, I think it's time for me to lick my wounds and try to have some semblance of a normal life for the next nine weeks. In that spirit, it's time to talk about something non-bar related and our ski trip to Big Bear seems like a great place to start.

Though I was still numb (and kind of tipsy) four hours after the exam ended, we managed to come home, pack some warm clothes, load the dog in the car and make the two hour and 15 minute drive to Big Bear.

As we had back in July, we rented a fully-equipped, pet-friendly cabin to call home for the weekend. Our two bedroom, two bath digs came with a wood-burning fireplace, a hot tub, and plenty of furniture for Mason to lounge on. In the dead of the night it was damn near impossible to find, but after a brief stint with me peering out the fogged up windows of the car on the side of a dark, deserted street while Jack tromped around in the snow, shining his flashlight on unsuspecting homeowner's front porches looking for a house number (this sort of felt like a scene out of a horror movie), we managed to find "Pine View," got unloaded, and promptly fell asleep for 12 hours. It was blissful.

We spent our first morning in Big Bear grabbing breakfast at a tiny gem known as Grizzly Manor. The place has maybe ten tables, one waitress and one line cook, and what I'd argue is the best breakfast east of I-15. I did my best to tackle "the blob"--homemade biscuits topped with gravy, pieces of bacon, a couple fried eggs, and shredded cheese. It was a coronary on a plate and it was divine.

After breakfast we were off to the slopes. I had only been skiing once before in my life (with my ex-boyfriend in 2002 on the weekend he planned to propose, so my focus had hardly been on skill retention) so I was nervous even to tackle the novice slopes at Snow Summit. Jack, on the other hand, has been skiing since he was old enough to walk and has no qualms with taking on a double black diamond on his first run. So when we arrived he headed immediately to the top of the mountain to show off his mad skills, but foolishly left me in the care of Hot Ski Instructor Brian for two hours [insert devious laugh here]. I'm not sure if it was the fact that it was 60 and sunny and I was in fully lined ski gear or whether it was just Hot Ski Instructor Brian, but after my lesson I think I had steam coming out of my parka and was ready to call it a day. Lazy? Yes. Concerned about it? Not at all.



We didn't wake up from our afternoon nap (the most underrated guilty pleasure on the planet) until it was way too late to go out to dinner so we ordered a pizza and called it a night.

Mason maximizing his opportunity to be on the furniture...and Jack.

I would have been content to spend Saturday lounging in front of the tv enjoying the feeling of not having to study for anything or bill any hours, but felt I owed it to Jack to at least give skiing a shot. Dressed a little more weather-appropriate, we hopped on what must have been the most crowded lift at Snow Summit in the hopes that the run labeled "easiest way down" would be doable for a virtual beginner like me.


Unfortunately, every novice snow boarder in southern California had the same idea. It took all of three minutes before some skank on a snowboard cut me off and knocked me off balance. I managed to stay upright but I was visibly rattled. Jack handled the situation by sliding into an expertly executed hockey stop and spraying a layer of powder all over the chick's face. Take that, snow bimbo!! Nevertheless, it wasn't five minutes later that some other stupid wannabe snowboarder lost control, plowed into me and knocked me flat on my well-padded rear end.

Don't get me wrong. I understand that anyone raised in southern California regards skiing as an archaic sport and sees snowboarding as the only legitimate way to get down a mountain. That may explain the throngs of tweens and teens who flock to Big Bear to wreak havoc on an otherwise peaceful setting and to inflict injury on the likes of me. But I'm not buying it. Until I can ween myself off the bunny slopes and see some trained snowboarders in action first hand, I will continue to regard southern California snowboarders as a waste of good man-made snow.



Having no desire to do "the easiest way down" down again, we ended up spending 90% of the afternoon going down the same green slope over and over again. It was super easy, virtually snowboard free, and allowed me to feel in control of my skis, so Jack was sweet enough to follow me down the "family fun run" all day long. At the end of the day he somehow managed to convince me that I needed to challenge myself and tackle a blue slope. Given that the only options to get back to the car were to do the "easiest way down" or a less populated blue run, I thought it seemed doable. Midway down I was on my ass again with tears frozen to my cheeks (yeah, skiing terrifies me as it turns out) and I think it took us a good five minutes just to figure out how to get me back on my skis without falling over, but safely at the bottom and looking back on the incline I'd just traversed (which looked steep as hell to me), I was decidedly triumphant.

That slope behind us is the one that left me in tears, though it looks fairly harmless upon further reflection.

That night we hit up a place called "The Pub" for some bar food and beer. There was live music, a crackling fire in the fireplace, and an abundance of board games to keep you entertained. We sat at a high-top table and played Gin, ate popcorn shrimp and drank beer for several hours. Perfect end to a day on the slopes.

In the end we never did make much use of our fireplace or our hot tub at the cabin. We kept forgetting to buy wood for a fire, and when we tried to get in the hot tub we were disappointed to find out it is kept a bit too chilly for a frosty night and is illuminated by floodlights we couldn't figure out how to turn off. And really, nothing says romance like luke-warm hot tub water and spotlights ensuring that your every move can be viewed from the street or any house in a 50 yard radius.

All in all, it was a really nice weekend. Just getting out of San Diego and away from anything even remotely related to the bar exam was worth it. Mason feels like the king of the world when he gets to go somewhere in the car and stick his head out the sunroof, and getting to lay on the furniture (which he's not allowed to do at home) must have been his idea of the perfect mountain getaway. Jack was excited that we live in a part of the country where we can be in flip flops with sand between our toes and two hours later 8,000 feet above sea level with snow under our feet. And let's be honest, all I really cared about was that I looked cute in my purple, pink and white snow gear.

Riddle Me This

Today was a frenetic, bar-obsessed day. I felt like my outlook was generally improving since the weekend, and then today I got crazy all over again. Couldn't focus on work. Couldn't hold a conversation unless it was about the exam. Seriously, homegirl has gone certifiably nuts. My husband keeps trying to derail my bar-induced OCD with distractions and suggestions on more appropriate uses for all this anxious energy. Alas, the neurosis remains.

But I'm looking for an answer, and given the recent influx of traffic my blog has attracted thanks to my California bar exam recap below, I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this query.

Why is it that the February pass rate is notoriously up to 20% lower than July? I understand that February is heavily comprised of repeaters, but why does the fact that you failed once make you that much more likely to fail again? Shouldn't it seem that the people who've failed once have a leg up because they know what to expect? Or they know what they did wrong? Or because they're just hungrier for it?

Are people who've failed the exam once just predisposed to repeat failures? What are the people who fail multiple times doing wrong? And for those who fared better on your second (or third, or fourth) attempt, what is it that you finally did differently?

Do the February graders just scrutinize it harder because they know they're dealing largely with repeaters?

I'm finding this whole pass rate nonsense very discouraging, so I'm just trying to make sense of it. In July, three repeaters from my law school retook the exam. They all failed again. Yet 16 out of 19 first-timers passed. Can anyone explain where the disconnect is here?

Hell Revisited (2008 Edition)

Five days later, I'm finally ready to publicly discuss my second journey through hell and how I've emerged on the other side just a little more confident than I was last July.

Although I couldn't bring myself to tell any of the kind folks in my BarBri class that this wasn't my first attempt at the agony that is the California bar exam, I'm finally able to use the f-word (failed) in a sentence without my eyes welling up with tears. This new-found ability to admit my shortcomings has less to do with acquiring a sense of humility and more to do with feeling like I worked my ass off for this bar exam and being able to understand where I went wrong the first time. It's a lot easier to admit that you failed when you're also in the position to assure people that you did better the second time around. The question that remains, however, is whether I did well enough to pass.

Most of my loyal readers (i.e. my friends and family) know the road I took to get to this place and don't need to re-read the journey. But because I know this post will be read by many a California bar-taker who googles the subject, I feel obliged to give a little background. In 2005 I graduated from a Top 25 law school. That July I took (and passed) the Missouri bar exam. The following February I took (and passed) the Illinois bar exam. I, of course, took BarBri before Missouri but truthfully spent only about five days studying for Illinois, with no outside help at all. Given my success on so little preparation, I didn't fret too much over the fact that I had exactly 18 days to study for the July 2007 California bar or that there was no possible way I could do a bar review course. My summer of '07 was spent getting married in another country, interviewing for jobs, planning and executing a cross-country move. So it wasn't until we landed in San Diego on July 6th that I even started to study. Given that those 18 days were equally devoted to unpacking, calling home to talk to the family and friends I was missing, starting this blog and generally getting settled in, I would estimate that I studied about 10% as much as most examinees. Nevertheless, I marched into the July '07 bar cocky and confident and believing I was wonder-woman. But as I came to learn in November of last year, um, I wasn't.

When you fail the California bar, they send you your answers and your scores (those who pass simply get instructions on being sworn in). A cursory review of my July performance told me that I needed only 22 more points (out of 1000) on the essay, and 5 more points (out of 200) on the multi-state multiple-choice exam to have passed. Those numbers sickened me.

After crying until my body was dehydrated, puking until there was no more vodka in my bloodstream, breaking the news to my firm and subsequently gaining ten pounds just to make sure I felt as miserable as possible, it was time to gear up for round two. On January 2, 2008 I started BarBri. My firm was kind enough to give me a low billable requirement for January and paid leave for the entire month of February, and so for the past two months I have done nothing but eat, sleep and breath California bar exam. In that time I did well over 1000 MBE questions. I outlined and/or practiced nearly every sample essay I could get my hands on. I made notecards of the questions I missed. I reviewed outlines. I spent 14 hours at a time in the UCSD med school library. And on the last night before the exam, I pulled out the questions from the July bar and gave them another try. I just needed to test myself to see if I'd improved. And with two months of studying under my belt, it was painfully obvious to me why I'd failed the first time around. My answers were wretched and that little thing they call the "California method" (underlined subject headings throughout your essay and IRAC-ing everything to death) was nowhere to be found. If nothing else, I was smarter and more prepared than I had been in July, and that was going to have to carry me through.

I marched into the exam last Tuesday feeling confident yet petrified. Strangely enough, I was seated in almost exactly the same spot as I was in July (one row forward, and one seat over) so the whole thing was eerily familiar. This time around, however, I was ready. A hell of a lot more ready than I'd been in July, at least. And for no good reason, as I looked around the room, I felt that I was more prepared than a lot of people there. Perhaps it was just the despair that comes with having failed it before (possibly more than once), but there was a vacancy behind a lot of eyes. Many of those seated near me walked in on Tuesday with a pervasive sense of defeat, and it showed in the way they carried themselves and in the way they interacted with the people around them. I instantly recognized that the vast majority of the hundreds of examinees in my test site had not been in my BarBri class and deduced that unless the lesser known prep programs were just heavily attended this year, many of these people hadn't done any commercial preparation at all.

The first three essays were straightforward and made sense to me. We had torts (landowner's liability and negligence), professional responsibility (confidentiality and conflicts of interest), and then crim/crim procedure (5th and 6th amendment rights and murder). I took entirely too long on the first essay, which ran me short of time on the crim problem (I had to stop mid-sentence), but following the BarBri/California method I at least got everything on the page. I could have used five more minutes to really nail down the facts in the last answer and give it a more in-depth analysis, but at the very least the salient points of law were in there and a cursory analysis was worked in. The performance test that afternoon was, however, abysmal. I felt the question and file were poorly written and difficult to follow. One of the cases seemed to have little applicability and it was hard for me to get in my groove. I'm concerned about my score on that PT. And, as each performance test makes up 13% of your total score, it's a big thing to worry about.

Day two is the MBE. Two-hundred multiple choice questions on six substantive areas of law. A perfect score is unattainable. To pass you need to generally get about 130 out of the 200, or roughly 60% correct. On the last two complete practice exams I took, I was averaging about 145 out of 200. The exam is scaled to make up for discrepancies that occur from exam to exam that might make one administration tougher than another, so if I was able to pull out a performance even marginally close to where I was on the practice exams, I should be okay. I really had no feelings one way or another at the end of the MBE. I felt confident about a lot of my answers and had time left over to go back and re-read the ones that seemed like really close calls to me. I admit that by the time I got to #190 I was mentally exhausted and all the answers seemed right, but I pushed through and made the best of it. I do not feel that the MBE will be my downfall. In fact, in some ways I wish it was weighted more heavily than just 35% of the total score. But hell, what do I know, anyway?

Going into day three, I had all the determination and clarity I could muster. I made the mistake of looking at the pass rates on Wednesday night, so in the back of my mind I was scared shitless. But I set all that aside, put on my game face and vowed to give it everything I had in me. When I opened up the essay packet and saw that we'd been given a wills/trust crossover, community property and corporations, I was elated. I'm a divorce attorney so community property is what I do. Wills and trusts are a logical connection to community property and were something I had a feeling would be tested so I was well-versed on the law. Corporations was just one of the subjects I remembered easily. These essays must have been a gift from the gods.

Or not.

I coasted through the wills/trusts question, spending too much time (again) but really doing a deep and thorough analysis with solid, accurate points of law. I inadvertently omitted the pretermitted child argument (you exam takers know what I'm talking about) but felt very "on" with everything else. I strutted into the community property essay with all the confidence of a seasoned family law attorney, certain this was going to be my cash cow. Instead, I quickly realized the question dealt with a bigamous relationship (something I've never seen in practice); a putative spouse (again, never come across my desk); quasi-marital property, quasi-community property, and separate property issues; and a third-party tort recovery from one spouse, during the marriage. Wha??? Where I should have been confident and smooth, I was flustered and unsure. I made up some law (which turned out to be RIGHT!) but because I didn't know how off my Rachel-created legal doctrines really were, I didn't apply them with nearly the clarity and force that I should have.

With no time to spend second-guessing myself, I hastily moved on to the last essay with about 45 minutes until time was called. What appeared on its face to be a corporations question seemed to also have notes of agency, partnership, contracts and professional responsibility (which was already tested on Tuesday). The California bar is notorious for including one question that leaves everybody guessing what they were testing. For the February 2008 bar, it was essay #6. I crammed as much analysis in as I could, rejecting any partnership doctrines and arguing strictly corporations, agency, contract remedies (sort of), and professional responsibility. When I closed that exam and walked out to my car, I called my husband and said simply, "I'm fucked."

However, God was shining down on me in the last performance test. Because each PT carries the weight of two essays, I was beyond determined to kill this one dead in its tracks. Somehow the stars aligned and I instantly saw the outline, the analysis and a killer answer in my head. I rejected BarBri's suggested 90 minutes for reading and outlining and then 90 minutes for writing in favor of a 60/120 approach. In my gut I believe that those who left themselves less than two hours to write were probably left with an incomplete answer, a shallow analysis, or at the very least a really sore hand. This was an endurance test, to say the least. And it made me very thankful that, unlike the July '07 administration, I did not suffer a computer meltdown that forced me to handwrite the entire PT.

I left there on Thursday evening feeling nothing but numbness. I didn't feel like I passed, but I didn't feel like I failed. When I walked out of the July exam, I knew that I'd failed but I wasn't well-enough prepared to know why. This time, I couldn't gauge how I did, but had perfect hindsight to know what issues I missed and what small things I could have done to make my answers better.

At least once a day (if not more) since the conclusion of the test, I break out into a cold sweat and have a full-blow panic attack about the exam. For me, it seems the whole world is riding on the outcome of this test. If I failed again, I will lose the amazing job I have at an amazing law firm. Without my employment, we cannot afford to live in San Diego. If we cannot afford to live here, I will have to move back to MO or IL (where I'm licensed) and Jack will have to stay here to finish out his time at UCSD. Our marriage will suffer, our finances will be shot, and my career will take a serious blow. There is nothing more I could have done to study or prepare for this test, so taking it a third time isn't an option. Thus, in my mind, the world as I know it is resting on the words that pop up onto my screen at 6:00pm PST on May 16, 2008.

Reading what other bloggers have to say about the exam sometimes reassures me, and other times sends me into a dangerous tailspin. I take comfort in knowing I'm not the only one who wasn't sure what PT-A was talking about or what bodies of law should have been applied to essay #6. I feel good when I see that some people didn't catch the putative spouse/quasi-marital property issue, but then I freak out when I see that a lot of people did a Marvin analysis or included things I never even considered. On more than one occasion I have pulled out my exam from July to assess how it was scored, and then attempted to gauge how many points I feel I earned on this round. I keep telling myself that two months of preparation has to have garnered me the extra 22 points I needed in July, but that 33% pass rate for the February administration cautions me not to have any abundance of hope. I can pick out two (if not more) people seated around me that I know I have beat (like the dude who stopped writing and began braiding his own hair, or the girl who sat where I did in July who wasn't even sure what topics of law were being tested), but in the end all my suppositions mean diddly squat.

If I do end up pulling it out this time and earning a coveted spot amongst those who call themselves California attorneys, I'm going to have another blog full of the tips and tricks that I employed and believe in. In addition to true blue studying balls to the wall, I put all my loony superstitions to work last week, wore my lucky bra and listened to the same motivational playlist on my iPod before each session began. But more than anything else, I prayed. I'm not a deeply religious woman, but the weight and pressure of this exam brought out a need in me to lay my troubles at the feet of a power greater than I. I prayed more in the three weeks leading up to the exam than I did in the past three years combined. And whether my pleas for clarity and strength were heard is yet to be seen, but if nothing else my frequent prayers gave me an outlet for the anxious energy with which I was surrounded.

When I went in to see my wellness guru the night before the exam (yes, it's a very SoCal thing to do, and no, I don't care whether you think it's stupid), he told me I had a very positive energy. And while I'm not much of a believer in that hokie-pokie most of the time, I took it as a good sign. It was just the affirmation I needed to stride into the exam with confidence and pep in my step.

So do I think I passed? Yes? Possibly? Maybe? I don't know? I'm a strong believer in the fact that people who think they failed might just pass, and those who think they nailed it are doomed to fail. Rereading my recap from the July exam, I can't say that I feel that hopeless and discouraged, but I'm far from believing I killed it. People keep telling me that they're sure I did it this time because I was prepared, because I needed only a small margin of points to pass, and because I've done it twice before. And while I appreciate your sentiments and confidence in me, I have to admit that you're not persuading me one bit. At this point in time, I'm finding little consolation. Instead I'm obsessing and acting like a neurotic, traumatized nutso. If this insanity keeps up for the next 73 days I'm going to have to be committed. I just don't know how I did and unfortunately I haven't found a single person (who actually seems to have any authority on the subject) who can offer me any solace.

What I do know is that I'm a smart chick and a good lawyer. And if the California board of law examiners can't see that, then I suppose it's only their loss.

At least, that's what I'm going to keep telling myself for the next ten weeks while I await my destiny. Chin up, Rachel. Nothing you can do now but wait.