So Many Emotions

I have a number of friends who took the MA Bar in July. I know how craptastic that experience can be, as I did it last year. 2 of those friends, however, were more at the forefront of my mind. I will call them Friend 1 and Friend 2 (no relation to Thing 1 or Thing 2).


Friend 1
I have known this woman since I was 12. We started law school at the same time, at different schools, but during the second half of her first year her brother was diagnosed with cancer. Her brother is one of my favorite people, and they are very very close, so she decided to take a hiatus from school to spend time with her family during this hard time. I am happy to say that said brother is in remission and has been for a couple of years now. He is doing well. Friend 1 returned to law school but pretty much had to start over because of the way the first year is structured. She has gone through SO MUCH to get to the end; with a number of family tragedies getting in the way of her schoolwork she has done so well. Her story is interesting. She studied for the Bar all summer: we had many a bitch session about how much stress comes from so much information. Two things contributed to her thinking that she had definitely failed the Bar when the exam was over.

1. Our friend had cancer as a child and the treatments left her heart weak. She had been in the hospital awaiting a transplant, but there were complications and she had to have an LVAD inserted into her heart. It is an electrical device that I can't explain very well, but it meant open heart surgery. Friend 1 is very very close to this friend, and this was hard for her as well. That surgery was scheduled for day 1 of the Bar exam, so you can imagine where her attention would be.
2. On top of that, Friend 1 has trouble sleeping. In order to counteract that, she had a sleeping pill prescribed to her a couple of weeks before the Bar. About 1 week before the exam, she and her father were having trouble studying and they discovered one of the side effects of this pill was short term memory loss. So Friend 1 toasted us the day after the exam as such: "Hooray to failing the Bar!"

She was convinced she failed - had already been studying for February. And, my dear readers, she passed. Found out yesterday. She is a lawyer now and I couldn't be prouder of her - It says SO MUCH about her dedication and intelligence that she could succeed at this. I have been beaming for her since yesterday.

Friend 2
I met this woman through my boyfriend. He brought me to her law school graduation party and I was instantly ecstatic to be her friend. She is the sweetest, kindest, most heart-warming person I have ever met. She is also SUPER-smart. She took to Bar this past summer even though she graduated last year due to issues with her law school - there was some confusion about a policy the school had and they didn't giver her any leeway, and so she finished later than her class. She is not a fan of her law school. But I give her credit - we had dinner with another friend who currently goes to said law school and loves it, and Friend 2 was all grace and class and just steered the conversation away rather than bashing the school. I love her for that, among other things.

She studied SO HARD. I know, because I didn't study nearly as hard - I spent a lot of time goofing off at boyfriend's house rather than studying. She was up all hours of the night making flashcards. During the halfway point practice exam, she was sort of tricked into eating something with red dye - she is allergic, and it made her very sleepy, and she did not do as well as she wanted to. She honestly wanted to give up and I am so glad she didn't.

Unfortunately, Friend 2 does not get her mail sent to her house - she and her husband have a PO Box. When we spoke last night, it was after the PO had closed and MA doesn't post the results online until a week or so later than the letters go out. So I am still anxiously awaiting the results - I know, without a doubt, that she passed. She is hopeful but less optimistic. But I am looking forward to attending a party at her house soon so I can properly congratulate her. I will let you all know the results.

I am/was as nervous for these ladies as I was for myself - well, maybe a little less. My friends can attest to my utter confidence in the fact that I hadn't passed. The point of this post, though, is just to express how proud of my friends I am and how happy I am to be associated with such accomplished lawyers :)