In 1999, I too, took the Bar exams.

The night before that first Sunday, I barely slept. My roomie, Charmaine, and I had agreed to wake up at 4:30 a.m. so we’d have time to scan the “hot tips” slid under our hotel door by the BarOps volunteers. Although we went to bed early, I could hardly contain my anxiety. I kept thinking, this is it. My fate was sealed. Four years of law school condensed into four months of self-review. I wanted to panic and rant, but I didn’t want to disturb my roommate. There was nothing I could do but pray for the solace of slumber to banish my despair. Tick… tick… tick…

I must have slept through Political and International Law, because it zapped by in a blur. I remember that I had to leave one or two questions blank and was unable to finish the exam, since it was quite long. Luckily, I found my second wind after resting a bit. Things got easier for me as soon as I hurdled the first subject. Well, except for Taxation, which got my boyfriend quite worried when he saw me walking out of De La Salle at 3:30 p.m. during the third Sunday. I had finished early and felt that I had nothing else to write on the test booklet. Marc thought I just gave up and walked out of the exam. O ye of little faith…

But then, the Bar exams was nothing compared to Malcolm. 

Four years earlier, I had been a One-L. Everything Scott Turow described in his book, applied to me. Being a law school freshman meant that I had the toughest professors who seemed derisive of anything I said; a full day’s class schedule, which limited study hours to the evening and curtailed weeknight activities; and some feet-high of U.S. and Philippine cases to chew through. Recitation was conducted daily in all of the subjects, so theoretically, one ought to be prepared at any given time. Coming from AS, I was used to U.P.’s four-day school week, where diligence was optional. College was 80% fun and 20% studying; freshman year at Malcolm was the reverse.

In aid of my sanity,  I kept a scribble diary, where I jotted down random thoughts in between cases and hornbooks. My psyche must have been all twisted and dark then, because this is the happiest prose I could find:

III.

Basking in liquid light

surrounded by precarious glory

but not stopping

no longer desiring

no time

for lilies and roses

for blissful blankets of thought

for me

the arched portals of the institution

thief of innocence

philanthropist of naivete

prime executioner of youth

merchant of leaders

vendor of power

jailer of the weak

i submit myself.

Freshman year at Malcolm was when we really started studying for the Bar exams. We were told to ingest and digest our law, so that we could spill our guts four years later. In retrospect, our professors were right.

The madness at Malcolm did not kill me. It only made me stronger.