So You’ve Just Finished Taking the Bar Exam … Now What?

Five minutes remained. The second hand on my watch stubbornly kept turning, along with my stomach. Three quarters of the California Bar Exam were finished, and my insides had decided to rebel right before the last push. But enough was enough. Despite my body’s objections, I hoisted myself to the sink, dabbed my face with paper, and lurched back to the exam room for another hundred multiple choice questions. 

The proctors must have noticed my demeanor. I could see, through their trained stoicism, a spark of pity behind their eyes. They handed out the materials and every examinee looked down, knowing how close they were to the end – and how far the final stretch would be.

One last restroom call before the starter pistol. With my blood consisting of approximately 80% coffee, there was definite strategic value in a preemptive strike. When I was finished, the restroom’s mirror reflected the reason for the proctors’ condolences: paper, stuck in perfect half-circles under my eyes, like crescent moons or, more appropriately, an albino raccoon.

I sighed and cleaned myself up. It had already been three months of behaving like a trash panda while I studied. What was one day of looking the part?

Ordinarily, I would have an experience like this and be mortified. I might take the rest of the day off and hope that everyone would forget that I even exist! But all of us who have survived the bar know that the singular focus we honed to take the exam could empower us to turn off our embarrassed reactions, and in fact, all of our emotional responses altogether.

For you February bar takers who have just finished your exams, you have probably encountered the same reactions from your friends and family. Heartfelt congratulations, everyone giving you big hugs, cheers at the local bar, and always, the same question: “Are you relieved it’s all over?” Likely you have realized that this is an impossible question because that relief just isn’t there. Instead, there’s … nothing.

Speaking from my own experience, and the experiences of my friends and colleagues who have recently gone through the process, I know that there’s a unique kind of hollow energy that resides in you once the exam is over. It’s not a feeling of solace, like you would normally have after a collegiate exam. It’s not even a feeling of dread, like we would have during our holiday breaks while waiting for our law school exams to be graded. The stories of the pass/fail rates of the bar exam mean that we can’t feel like the danger has passed, and the results are announced too far into the future for us to be truly afraid of them. We’re too stressed to relax, and too relaxed to be stressed!

If you have just finished the February bar and are wondering if you’re weird or broken for feeling this unique form of ennui, I’m here to tell you that you absolutely aren’t alone! Plenty of future attorneys have sat right where you are and wondered what to do with themselves now that their schedules aren’t filled to the absolute brim with study. Unfortunately, I didn’t go into health law, so I don’t have a panacea for everyone, but I will dish out a few pieces of advice that I would give to myself at this time last year.

Give It A Few Days Before You Do Anything Big

By the time this article is published, you’ll hopefully have already done this step. For the first few days after the exam, you feel like you don’t want to do anything. It makes sense why you wouldn’t! For the past three months your brain has been bombarded by the same chemical signals it releases when you are being chased by a hungry tiger. Now that you’ve escaped, it would take a truckload of serotonin to even get a twitch out of your abused cellular receptors. Before you embark on any excursions meant to make you feel something, anything at all, just take a few days to simply exist while your body heals.

Get Back into A Daily Routine

Was there ever a life outside of the exam? I know I had to significantly shift myself to adapt to this new life where I didn’t have this test staring me in the face every second of every day. It wasn’t passive; it took active change to bring myself to adopt a schedule where I completed normal, human tasks each day. If you have a job already, the daily routine of going back into the office will help. If you used to work out, go back to it on a schedule – you have to work those stressors out somehow. You can also begin eating normal food at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, instead of picking bags out of the sustenance hoard you maintained while you were stuck in full goblin mode. In short, whatever is necessary to get your subconscious to remember what your life was like in the before-time.

Try To Forget

It is nearly impossible to forget that the results are looming, doomed to be released in only two short months. However, once your neural receptors can accept happy chemicals again, and once you’ve gotten yourself back into a daily routine, the next best thing you can do is just not think about the traumatic experience you just went through. At this point, you’ve worried and stressed enough for multiple lifetimes, and now the biggest exam you’ve ever taken is out of your hands. What good will worrying do now? 

Fortunately, if you’re reading this, you’re likely already in America’s finest city, and there are plenty of things that can help distract you. We have Michelin-star restaurants to visit, more alcohol types than legal specializations (like the mead scene in North County!), several amazing theme parks, and a whole bevy of naturally beautiful locations. Take the time to experience something new in your hometown, and the bar exam will seem like a distant memory.

The important thing to remember is that the exam is over, and the rest of your life starts as soon as those results drop in May. Pass or fail, you can take your next steps and make your future plans then. But if this albino trash panda could make it through the exam, survive the intervening period, and end up passing, then I have the confidence that each and every one of you will be on the Bar’s register soon enough.