Mental Debugs

I don’t have the slightest regard for the Philippine Bar Exams not until my sister took part in the examinations last September, a culmination of her four-year stay at a law school in far-flung Jolo, Sulu and of the months of preparation afterwards. I could only imagine how hard the Bar was, seeing the amount of time and effort she put into it, taking into consideration the constraints she had financially and domestic issues back home she dealt with during her review (and the room she rented somewhere in the University Belt wasn’t even conducive!). My sister and I have been in constant communication one Sunday after another, as the questionnaires were rolled out all four Sundays of September, voicing out how this particular Bar was the most difficult in recent years and how one subject, Taxation, had a percentage of the baristas not showing up in the succeeding days of the examination. “It was not only mentally draining,” she said, “but physically and emotionally taxing as well.” Six months after, March 17, 2011 came, the day she was anticipating and agonizing over since her last Sunday as a barista.

The day before, I slept late as news of the rollout of the Bar exam result spread like wildfire to the hopeful and would-be lawyers, their friends and families. I was told that it would be in the latter part of March or the first week of April, as the practice was, so an earlier release caught everyone by surprise. So I hurriedly logged on to the web and kept guard, regularly checking the Supreme Court website, refreshing the page every now and then in the hope that the result would suddenly pop out so that I could relay it immediately to my sister in far-flung Jolo. She was already anxious in anticipation that months leading to March 17, 2011 she would recount how the experience was, how she gauged her performance, and how the Bar exams ended with a bang, literally, when an explosion rocked the testing venue, DLSU in Taft Avenue, where it was reported that at least 44 people were injured. My sister also juggled personal baggage on the side that I just had to console her that whatever the results were, we would always be there for her.

March 17, 2011. 5:22 PM. I went back online as text messages began flooding in conveying what I have been waiting for the previous night: the results are out. I hurriedly opened a web browser, typed the Supreme Court URL, clicked on a link, and waited for a few seconds, and then there it was: the list of names scrolled down before my eyes. I wanted this to not be a sad story but looking at the list of baristas now officially conferred with the titles of attorney or lawyer or officer of the courts, my sister was not one of them. I thought there may have been some mistake or maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me so I controlled-F and typed a part of her name, either her first or second, but it was nowhere to be found. It dawned on me that a period like this could happen even to the best of us, even to my sister who I look up to.

It was heartbreaking as I personally saw the hard work put by my sister, from four years of Law School and months of extensive and rigid Bar review. A lot of things could have contributed to why she did not make it this time; certainly, the Bar itself is one not to be taken lightly as it is the most difficult set of examinations given in the country. There is a reason for everything, and surely God has laid out a different plan for her and passing the September 2010 Bar happened to be not one of them. I know my sister will make one hell of a lawyer. I am not saying this because she is family but because more than knowing is feeling she will. I know that my late Dad, too, would’ve been proud having one of his children not just finish Law School but successfully hurdling the Bar examinations and be a lawyer, an attorney, or an officer of the court someday. And when that happens, it would be a different story to tell.

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Photo of my sister, in green, with fellow baristas taken on the last day of the Bar exams.

One of my youngest siblings, one because she’s the other half in a set of twins, was constantly worrying about the examination she was to take in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She kept gnawing at the notion of finally sitting in and successfully passing the examinations that it became a regular “status update” on her Facebook account. I always consoled her that, unlike the nursing board exams or any licensure examinations in the country for that matter, the one she was about to take was fairly easy because it was not as extensive, without the questions reaching the 600 mark as she may have been accustomed to when she had the local boards. The passing percentage from what I know (and this needs to be verified though) is as low as 50 percent, so the probability of passing the exam was pretty high, unless the questions were alien to her or she instantly succumbed to a mental breakdown in the process, pun intended. The examinations in question are the ones given by the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties, commonly referred to as the Saudi Council, much like the Professional Regulation Commission only centered on the medical profession. The exams can be computer- or paper-based and be anything under the sun, as far as the questions go, but still within the confines of the discipline one belongs to. And passing the Saudi Council meant, no brainer here, that you can legally practice your profession anywhere in the Kingdom. My sister, about 17 hours ago, status-updated her Facebook to read Alhamdullilah (all praise is due to Allah). That meant, no brainer here too, that 17 hours ago, she just became Saudi Council-licensed.

You’d likely wonder if I am in the position to give unsolicited advice to her. My answer to that is a resounding yes because I, too, is Saudi Council-licensed. I sat for the exams in 2009 when I landed a contractual job as a physical therapist for a tertiary hospital in the Industrial City of Jubail, situated in the southeastern part of Saudi Arabia. Like her, I, too, gnawed at the idea of sitting in and passing the exams. I had my Saudi Council licensure at our hospital’s main branch, in Dammam, about an hour from where my hospital was so I had about sixty grueling minutes on a pick-up, with an Indian driver, racking my brains up for stock knowledge on physical therapy. No matter how religiously I burn the midnight candles to prepare for it, it wasn’t enough because the examination was, as mentioned earlier, anything under the sun. Imagine the whole of  physical therapy crammed in 60 questions only!

Well, I came out of the exams alive, minus the mental breakdown. The questions were not alien to me too. Either you have the answers stocked up and Dewey decimal-ed in the crevices of your brain or not was the key to passing the Saudi Council. And all I needed was to get half of the 60 questions to a T to be able to practice physical therapy legally. My exam certificates are reminders of that rather interesting experience. Too bad I was not a Facebook addict at that time, like my sister is now, and did not status-update it for my “friends” to see and read. But I Tweeted it, about two years ago, instead.

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Photo is of my sister, Yang, on her way to work in Al-Baha, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.