Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment.
Full effort is full victory.
– Gandhi
Like wow!
We made it
We here
– Talib Kweli
In her recent book, Super-Better, Jane McGonigal considers the notion that life’s challenges can be vanquished by turning them into a video game with these seven steps:
1. Challenge yourself.
2. Collect and activate power-ups.
3. Find and battle the bad guys.
4. Seek out and complete quests.
5. Recruit your allies.
6. Adopt a secret identity.
7. Go for an epic win.
If you’ve been reading this blog since it began and have concluded that I believe that the road to Bar success rests on a foundation of character, even spirituality, you’d be correct. I believe that because, for many, this is the first time – ever – that something so important will require so much of you and, and here’s the big part, will not come with a guaranty of success. It’s the unknown outcome, the risk of having to go through this more than once, that bumps the degree of complexity and stress up to a ten.
Before proceeding, just to recognize the obvious, let’s stipulate that passing the Bar Exam is an epic win no matter how you get there. An “I’ll always remember where I was when I found out I passed” kind of win: an “I carry my means of making a good living around in my head” kind of win.
The thing is, that whether you pass this test is not up to you alone. From the moment your last testing day ends, your fate will be entirely in the hands of others. A machine will scan and score your Multistate Bar Exam. The remaining 65% your grade will go to the grader team for each of your essays and performance tests. Being both a former grader and a former Exam Director for 20 years, I trust graders and believe in their abilities, their diligence and their good faith. That fact notwithstanding, they’ll be in charge of what happens – not you. From the time you exit the Exam site, all you can do is hope. So, although it’s natural when you first get into this, to work all the way backward from your results letter in framing your anticipated epic win, it ignores this material unknown.
So I hope that you may be reassured at least a little bit to learn that there’s another kind of epic win available in this journey from anxious 3- or 4-L to practicing attorney. It’s nearly as important as passing, I think, and the beauty part is that it’s entirely up to you. If you go about your preparation the right way, it’s guarantied, and you’ll feel the flush of victory four months before results even come out. Here’s what I mean.
The wonderful (and terrible, if you choose to look at it that way) news is that you CAN control your exam performance and your preparation one hundred percent. Not exactly easy, but doable. You CAN charge into your personal battle on a bunch of fronts: to wrap your brain around the fact that now is the time to start studying for July 2016; to actually begin that effort; to stay focused and conscientious; to work determinedly through your weaknesses and shortcomings and to maximize your strengths; to manage some semblance of a “work-life” balance; and to hold on to your Self, no matter how many hours a day you’re studying.
Hard work is the main part of winning that battle. But there’s much more that you can do. Here are some tips to help you score what I think is the truly epic win.
1. Make a solemn vow to go after this as hard as you can. Excuse me for being blunt, but are you really serious about this, or are you just fooling around? Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and philosopher put it this way: “The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.” Don’t settle.
2. Keep that solemn vow! This will mean always being respectful of your goal and your maximum effort, and never selling yourself short. It will require you to be dutiful and loyal to your vow, by working at a high level every day. It will demand that you demonstrate honor, integrity and, yes, personal courage, no matter how tired or discouraged you become.
3. Honor your effort every day with a small ritual. Before going into battle, ancient Samurai warriors took a ritual sip of sake, praying to fight honorably. A small daily ritual (hopefully alcohol-free) will remind you of the righteousness of your goal, and demonstrate your devotion to attaining it. Honorable intention every day will lead to honorable behavior every day.
4. Be honest about yourself, and humble. Merton described humility this way:
“In humility is the greatest freedom.” “It consists in being precisely the person you actually are. … and, since no two people are alike, if you have the humility to be like yourself, you will not be like anyone else in the whole universe.”
If you are humble, honest and devoted, you will learn how to pass the Bar Exam.
5. Be thankful and joyful. Stress is unavoidable and, if you weren’t at least a little bit anxious, that would be something to be really worried about. But there is plenty of time for joy and gratitude in your battle if you simply widen your field of vision. If you consider preparing for the Bar Exam solely in terms of your stress and anxiety, how do you think you’ll always feel? But if you consider preparing for the Exam as your highest and best Law School achievement, as something that you will do with your classmates (your brothers and sisters in arms, if you will) and as a privilege that very few in this world ever earn or are given, the light will shine on your road to victory over yourself.
The next entry of You and the Bar Exam will be the first of many on their way that will focus on the nuts and bolts of Bar preparation. For the next few weeks, I’ll be discussing some tactical approaches to the MBE. So please stay tuned.
In the meantime though, get to work bringing your mind, body and spirit to the front of the stage through daily practice. That way, when you walk out onto the street on the last day of the Exam, having put your whole self into this, come what may, you’ll be able to lay claim to the truly epic win of personal fulfillment and say:
Like wow!
We made it.
We here.
