That's it?

It's been a few days since the bar exam (almost a week actually), and I have not written about it yet. There has been a lot going on since then. I did write something on Wednesady night, but I did not have internet access at the time. So, here, below, are my first thoughts about the bar exam the first time I had a chance to sit and contemplate it for a few moments:

I am writing this at 1:30 on Wednesday night after the bar exam. Julie and I left Tampa as soon as the exam was over so we could go to church and then we came home. We just watched a movie and Julie went to sleep, so I came into the living room to take care of some stuff. I looked around the apartment and saw some boxes piling up, my backpack on the floor and realized I don’t have anything to do. And I don’t know how to deal with that. The bar exam is the pinnacle of what I have been preparing for. The entire arc of my educational life has pointed to the last two days. I’ve always known I would have to take the bar exam. But I only began to understand what it was about last summer when my friends, the people who went all the way through law school with me, were preparing for the exam. I would run into people on campus and hear about it from them. I would call friends to check on them and hear about it from them, as well. I really heard about it after the exam was over. Then I went to the LLM program and most of my classmates at UF had taken the bar exam. Although it wasn’t my top priority, it was pretty close to the forefront of my thoughts throughout the school year. Then for the last 7-8 weeks, the bar exam has consumed me. If I was awake, I was thinking about it. If was going to bed, I was thinking about it. If I was asleep, I was dreaming about it. Get the point? The bar exam has been my life. And now it is over. I just spent almost two hours watching a move and I don’t feel guilty. I’m not worried about what I’m going to cover tomorrow when I study. And I feel lost to an extent. Which leads to the longest wait of my life. Until the scores are released, I won’t truly know how I did the last two days. And it is possible I will have to do this whole process again in January and February. I have friends who are smart and generally hard workers who had to take the exam a second time. So I am certainly not taking anything for granted. But in the meantime, there are other things to do. We’ve got to get this apartment packed up so I can move home to Miami. I have to finish my paper for the LLM. I have to find a job. And that is one of the great things about life: it goes on. When you go through a major change, it will bring you some great surprises if you let. When you reach one pinnacle, a new pinnacle will appear with new challenges. You can’t allow these changes to slow you down. You have to be ready to embrace the new challenges rather than be paralyzed by fear or emptiness. So I am looking forward to finding out what is next, even though I don’t know what it is. But not right away. I think I will enjoy the liberation, for a few days at least. My mind and my body both need some much needed rest. Life will resume soon enough. But in the meantime, I am still contemplating the last year. It has been interesting. There are a lot of things about the last year I am going to miss. I am a very sentimental person and can get quite melancholy about sometimes. I may even write about it some.