Marty the Photographer (and lawyer): Bar Examinations 2008

One of my law professors during one of his bar review lectures said something that lingered in my mind for quite some time - "Bar examination is one of the best experiences in your life that you don't want to experience again." Of course, very law student would want to topple the most difficult licensure examination in the country on their first take. I may sound weird for this, but I agree with the bar exams being one of the best experiences in my life, but I like to do experience it again and again. Why? I love everything about it - the mixed emotions of excitement and nervousness you feel as you prepare for it to the discharge of sigh of relief after you finished writing the last word in the test booklet. I believe there would never be another experience in my life that would come close to that. And because of this reason I want to share a synopsis of my whole bar examination experience.

When I graduated from law in April 2008 in Far Eastern University Institute of Law, I invited some of my tamaraw classmates for a 4 day outing in Ilocos before we embark on a 4 month solitude with only the company of our bulky law books and myriad of other review materials. Looking back, it was really nice to have done that as part of our preparation for the bar. We have regained the passion and right focus in accomplishing our goal.

2008 FEU-IL Graduation

With my FEU-IL classmates at Cape Bojeador in Burgos, Ilocos Norte

I enrolled at the UP Law Center Bar Review Institute that started in the last week of April 2008 and ended sometime in July. I chose UP Law Center because of accessibilty and convenience being just a 5-10 minute drive from our house in Kamias. They also have some of the best lecturers of law that include the likes Judge Ed Vincent Albano (Civil Law), Atty. Edwin Abella (Tax), and Dean Carlos Ortega (Criminal Law). If I will take the bar exam again, I again will choose UP Law Center as my review school.

My UP Law Center Bar Reviewee ID

For the remaining months of my review, I locked up myself in confinement. I am so grateful to the family of Mija for lending me a temporary place to burn the midnight oil alone. I hit the books from 10am to 12 midnight everyday for 4 months alone in the house. My siblings would come at 12 midnight to sleep over and accompany me through the night. Mija would come on weekends and spend the entire day with me but we rarely talked as she did her work, or read books and magazines, while I reviewed. That was my routine when I was reviewing for the bar.

Where I reviewed for the Bar. Here are some of my books and other review materials.

I was living in this couch from 10 AM to 12 midnight everyday for 4 months

Where I take my short breaks for meals and merienda. Our former super househelp
Andy cooked food in our house then brought it in my review house everyday.

Then came September 2008 and the long wait was over. Time to go to the battlefield known as the De La Salle University in Manila. I was nervous but at the same time excited to take the exam I'd been dreaming to take since I was I child. The hotel for the FEU-IL bar examinees was in G-Hotel in Roxas Boulevard. My whole family and Mija would come with me in the afternoon of all 4 Saturdays (before the 4 Sundays of the bar exams) to the hotel to sleep over in my room. They would all drive me to the bar site in the morning of every Bar Sunday. In the afternoon, Mija would come back and fetch me. We wrap up the day by attending a 6 P.M. mass in our parish church in Kamias.