If You Don't Have A Dream, How You Gonna Have A Dream Come True?

[The July '06 California Bar Exam results were released last night, an event of which I'd've had no awareness except that two of my friends took it this time round. One passed, one didn't. I'm proud of both of them: S. for being as...I was going to say "brilliant as always," but it doesn't take brilliance to pass that exam. I takes a lot of practice, and learning, in an almost unquantifiable way, how to play the game.]

[One thing about S. is that she has never, ever let a stacked deck take her out of the poker game. She and I have been friends since she was in the 8th grade and I was in the 7th, and she has always refused to be cowed by daunting odds. She'd be the first to admit the occasional misstep (none, from my point of view, as absurd, obnoxious and perilous as mine), but it's never been for fear of a challenge. On the surface, every point along the path is the End Of The World (you should've heard her dring her last law school exams, which are justly famous for being the easiest - she aced, of course), and yet she gets where she wants to go.]

[I'm proud of J. because she's taken the thing three times and thinks she may try one more time in this here Golden State; if not, she's definitely going to try the exam put on by a state Bar that actually wants new lawyers. (Yeah, yeah; everyone wants to be a lswyer here, not in Wyoming.) Besides charm, beauty and brilliance, S. and J. also have in common the determination to add the abbreviation Esq. to the end of their names.]

[This is where I differ from them (stipulating as read the Y chromosome and the financial ineptitude - both of them are close to my age and own rental properties in lucrative markets, grumble). One of the hardest things to do with occasional acquaintances like old Mr. Thomas up the road from my parents, or the crazy lady who lived below me in my last building, is to hear them react to the very old news that I didn't pass the Bar with "well, you'll do it next time." There's usually an vague anecdote about John F. Kennedy, Jr., thrown in for who-knows-what reason. (He always struck me as an airhead - his repeated failures are supposed to make me feel better?) I used to try to match their chipper optimism, and for a long time I believed it, too.]

[You know what? I graduated from law school two and a half years ago. I took the Bar two months after graduation, and didn't pass. I haven't thought seriously more than a dozen times in the intervening period in a "legal way." I can perform occasional parlor tricks for laypeople, and I feel like I'm right. As my father's and grandfather's descendant, I was like that before law school anyway, or even kindergarten. The truth is that I have forgotten most of the details of the law. No doubt a lot would come back pretty quickly - everything looked awfully familiar when I toyed with reviewing for July last spring. But I can't say I miss knowing the Rule in Shelley's Case off the top of my head, and I spent a chunk of time really trying to get it. (Real Property was my and most of my classmates' hardest class, though taught by the school's best professor.)]

[Law school was great for me at the time. I grew a lot (you may think I'm an immature brat now, but you didn't know me in 2000), I worked on, and published an article in, the law review (not a prestigious example of its kind, but I did do it), and I learned to think in ways that have stood me in good stead. And maybe having that J.D. will make all the difference to my happiness one day.]

[But right now? My law degree is a past achievement and a potential asset. My diplomas (I got a spare) are rolled up and in storage.]

[It still comes down to the Vision Thing. George H. W. Bush and I have more in common than left-handedness and Gemini-itude. (And, yes, the Y-chromosome.) Unlike S. and J., I am dream-challenged, if only in the career arena. I don't know what I want to be now that I'm past grown-up, and I resent this chronic panic I've missed what might have been The Chance, a Chance that, for me, was never the point of going back to school in the first place.]

[Nobody better recommend What Color Is My Parachute? in response to this pity-party post. My parachute is a tasteful mauve, with a subtle yet overwrought design showing frolicking nymphs and satyrs in a Victorian garden.]

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