Yesterday, 23 September 2007, marks the last day of the 4-Sunday Philippine bar examination. It marks the last day for our bar examinees to give it all they’ve got. It also marks the beginning of another phase which others consider as more difficult – the waiting game.

Patience is a virtue; no one can seriously doubt that. It holds true to a sniper in war or a suitor in love. Waiting is never easy. Ask a first-time father or the relative of an operating room (OR) patient, who impatiently paces the hospital lounge waiting for the doctor to come out. You lose much control, or all of it.

Many variables are at work after an examinee submits his/her exam booklet. As the bar exams is pretty much an essay type, an examinee’s hope, and future, hangs in part on the personality and day-to-day condition of the examiner. Is he strict? Is he generous? Was he in a bad mood when checking an exam booklet, which, unfortunately, happen to be yours?

Indeed, there are so many reasons why waiting for the bar exam results is not easy. From a practical standpoint, the months spent waiting means lesser time to start reviewing again in the unfortunate event that a bar examinee doesn’t make it, as the results are not released until March (or, in our case, May) of the next year (by the way, try asking an examinee, even the best bet of any law shool, if he/she is sure to pass the exams, and he/she will most likely refrain from saying a confident “yes,” least a Higher Being teaches him/her a lesson or two in humility). From a basic point of view, we simply prefer being in control, we fear the unknown, and we want everything in an instant. Fastfood, instant coffee, instant gratification, instant everything. The months of waiting for the bar exam results is truly a torture.

Still, it’s a learning experience.

Congratulations, good luck and God bless to everyone who took the 2007 Philippine bar exams.

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