The target release for the bar results was at 11:30 AM.

I was refreshing my Twitter feed every minute. #Bar2014. The news came in little trinkets. Big mistake.

Crowd gathers in front of the SC.
Bar chairman takes the podium.
18.82% passing rate.

That’s when I lost it. There’s no way I would’ve made the cut, with a passing rate 2 percentage points lower than the last year’s. I kept trying to load the results page but to no avail. So I did the next best thing:

I started to cry.

While I was busy with all this drama, my friend, who is currently in the US, unbeknownst to me, continued refreshing the page. She then messaged me: you passed.

I passed. I made it.

:)

Our goals in life are mainly classified into two: to gain pleasure or to avoid pain. Passing the bar squarely falls on the latter.

There are plenty of factors involved in this licensure examination that passing it doesn’t only require hard work but a dash of luck as well. Not to mention damn good handwriting.

This road to success is suddenly paved with painstaking uncertainties! Your motivation dies. You lose the drive to seek pleasure from it. The waiting game for the results becomes a countdown not to the Greatest Moment of Your Legal Career but denigrates to the day when you find out if you have to take it again.

After knowing that I passed, a wave of relief engulfed me. Thank goodness I didn’t have to go through with that again. Relief more than joy. The part about gaining pleasure, I wholeheartedly left that for my family and loved ones.