The First Time “it didn’t happen.”

I do not think I will ever forget the first time I found out that I had not passed the bar exam. I was headed to a cafe after work with a colleague the night of, when all of a sudden both of us received texts from our more BOLE webpage stalker friends that the results were going to come out that night. We got our lattes, grabbed a table, and looked at each other nervously. As I looked at her, I felt a sudden lurch at the pit of my stomach, a harbinger of doom. The two of us tried to have a normal conversation but our mutual need to be alone with our anxiety was too strong to hide. We threw our coffee cups into the trash. Silently put our shaking limbs into the car. My colleague dropped me off a few blocks from home, and we departed ways, heading to await our respective destinies.

I could not function during the next few hours. I felt sick. I was not expecting the results until a few days later. I was not ready to learn my fate for the upcoming months. I did not want to know. Therefore, I went to bed around 10:00 PM because I was told the results would come after midnight and I wanted to be well rested to face whatever would happen next in my life.

I slept as long as my body would let me hide from the unknown. I woke up at 6:00 AM and opened up the dreaded email. Clicked the link and just stared. I froze for a second. Then my heart filled with panic. Gut-wrenching fear. I needed my mom. An early riser to pray in the morning, I knew she would be awake. I went outside my room, saw her in the living room, and in a broken voice whispered, “Mom, it didn’t happen.” “What didn’t happen?” she asked, confused.

“My test – it didn’t happen.”

I couldn’t get myself to say that words, “I did not pass,” because in my head all I could hear was “I failed.” I failed. I couldn’t say it aloud. Everyone else was still sleeping. I did not want my dad to know. I couldn’t cry in front of my mom. She looked at me but I needed to get back into the safety of my room. She uttered comforting assurances but this time, even her words couldn’t create the safe haven I sought. I looked back at the door of my room, darted back inside, and looked at my phone. There were several messages from my friends, with the question, “well?”

I could not. I just blinked and shook my head. After a few seconds, operating on backup batteries, like a robot, I messaged back, “I did not pass.” Then I called my closest friend and study buddy from law school. When he picked up, I whispered, “– I did not pass” and then I cracked. Tears flooded my eyes and danced down my cheeks. My friend did his best to reassure me. The thing I feared the past three years had come true.

The next I looked at my phone, it was 7:00 AM already. All of a sudden I was overcome with the burning question of how I was going to tell my employer. I just wanted to tell him and get it over with. I messaged my supervisor at work and asked if she was awake. While I waited for her reply, I caked on makeup onto my face, put something on, and headed out the door.

While I was waiting at the bus stop, my supervisor called. I told her I did not pass and broke into tears. Ugh, I was so embarrassed. I felt so naked out in the cold but the tears wouldn’t stop falling. She tried to reassure me and told me I could stay at home that day. I told her I was already on the bus at that point and I was going to get it over with. I felt like I was getting ready to sacrifice myself- like a lamb for slaughter.

The second I stepped out of the elevator in the office building and got off at the office floor, something came over me. It was like someone turned on a switch and I was from then operating on another robot mode, with one mission in life– attack my failure before it attacked me.

It was 8:30 AM. I sat at my desk and waited. A staff member came into the office. I was thankful that this wasn’t my first time being the first one in the office because then I could pretend everything was normal. I made myself smile and made small talk with her. All the while I surreptitiously looked through the glass windows, keeping an eye out for my boss. He walked in shortly after. I gave him a few minutes to settle in. I couldn’t wait any longer. I went into his office and asked him if I could talk to him privately, as calmly as I could. He looked at me quizzically and said, “sure, let’s go into the conference room.”

We went into the conference room. He went and closed the conference room door. Oddly, that action vaguely registered in my brain as something significant, to be analyzed at some point later in my super analytical brain. I waited for him to take his seat at the helm of the table and in my best fake calm robot voice, I told him I did not pass. I reassured him I would take it again, and that I could continue to do my best to be a good employee.

To his credit, he didn’t blink and told me it was okay. He even shared that a family member of his had to retake the exam in the past. He told me I still had my job and to let him know what I needed. I was not prepared for his kindness. He was not someone who I expected such kindness from especially in a moment of what to me was such obvious failure. I don’t know, I guess I expected him to fire me on the spot given that he had been reluctant to hire me. However, he didn’t. That kindness undid all my efforts at professionalism and I turned my face away to the side as my eyes filled up, and tears streamed down.

I awkwardly wiped my tears, at that point so much more embarrassed that I let him see me in a vulnerable state, than that I had failed. I was mortified. I composed myself. I thanked him, arranged my facial features into a neutral position, and left the glass conference room, ready to do battle with my emotions.

Looking back now, over a year later, I think more than failing the exam itself, it was the fact that I was vulnerable and could not put up a shield of armor in front of others that got to me. In other words, for the first time I could not pretend things were going well when things weren’t because the bar results were public. I was overwhelmed with embarrassment and shame; I cared too much about what other people thought of my intelligence. The entire summer studying for law school, I was so stressed out and worried about how if I failed, everyone would know. Not, if I failed, I would not be a lawyer, I would not realize my dream. Just that everyone would know I was a failure.

I didn’t know how to deal with failure because I had never really failed or struggled academically (crying about “B’s” in college doesn’t count) until I got to law school. My entire identity had been shaped around my “intelligence” or academic excellence prior to law school. My family viewed me as the “smart” one and I think they added to this whole persona I had around whether I was intelligent. If I’m honest with myself, even throughout college, while other women worried about being seen as pretty, I always worried about whether I was smart enough — if people saw me as smart.

It was just too much pressure to live up to the expectation of always succeeding academically, and the pressure finally swallowed me up. And spit me out as a crumbled up mess. I failed in a huge public platform and didn’t know how to deal with it. Fear, shame, and embarrassment crippled me while studying for the bar exam and so unsurprisingly, I collapsed on the actual days of the exam.

Above_the_Clouds

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