Getting Centered

Somehow, going home (albeit for a brief moment of time) helps me get centered. And, at the same time, it can make me "off-center," in that family issues must be dealt with. My father died a few years ago. His death, and everything that occurred around it, was traumatic. I will be visiting my father's grave, a grave that can be found in a tiny cemetery dating from the 1800's and which is renowned among "ghost watchers." This fact alone is particularly ironic given my father's belief that when one died, one was subsumed solely into the memory of the people one knew; that there was no spirit and soul. But this is not my belief...

I digress...I am going home to visit my family and to tell them that I am beginning another marathon run at the bar examination in July 2010. That I must see all my family and let them know that I love them, for when I return I will be singularly focused at earning an income and using all other available time to study for the bar.

When I go home, I will spend those few waking hours, before family members arise, nursing my coffee and enjoying the quiet to develop my study calendar.

I'm taking my MBE books with me and my flash cards; I will be developing a flash card for each MBE question that I missed and why. I will do a quick review of my flash cards the following morning to "burn" the knowledge into long-term memory so that answering the MBE's becomes familiar territory.

Having met with a bar tutor, a favorite of a friend of mine from law school, I will be probing into the materials he provided, and attempting to drum up sufficient financial resources to retain him. At the same time, I need to squirrel away enough resources to stop working in mid-May so that I can concentrate on one thing only - honing my test-taking technique. I hope that I can do this with a tutor; if not I will need to do it alone.

I've decided NOT to concentrate on reading Convisor or the Bar Bri phone books. I spent too much time re-learning the law during my first marathon exam session. I've decided to focus on 1) studying the bar examiners techniques by analyzing and mapping out each of the exams posted on the California bar examiner's Web site, and 2) to do the same for the MBE's.

I commit to more practice, practice of the bar exam essays and the performance tests; I will need critical feedback to ensure that I meet the examiner's standards. I will need to write each practice essay during the allotted time until the essays and PT's also become familiar territory.

Finally, I hope to retain a hypnotist used by one of the attorneys whom I now support and who passed the California bar exam on her second attempt. Using visualization techniques and hypnotherapy, she chased her self-doubts away and replaced them the belief that she, like the Little Red Engine, could pass the bar exam when she walked into that room for the second time.

I sit here, this morning, in my rented room looking out onto an overgrown garden lush with green and I think that I am very lucky to be sitting here…

At an older age, I am still filled with dreams of a new life and new career…

My ultimate goal is to become a judge in Superior Court. . .

While many younger, soon-to-be attorneys may dream about sitting enrobed on the bench of the Supreme Court, I shall be happy to achieve my modest dreams….

And to build the house that my father designed…and one which I’d like to run my practice out of…

And, perhaps, someday I will see one of my stories published…

A pent-up writer instead writes to you of her dreams of becoming an attorney…

A path that I think that I began moving toward all my life but which I was not ready to assume until now...

All things in good time.