When the euphoria fades

Each March, particularly on the bar exam results day (BERD), I relive the ecstatic moments in 1970 when I learned that I had made it.

In my time, expectant lawyers got to know the happy or sad news only on the BERD. As March neared, anxiety soared. It helped bring occasional relief that the day of reckoning was unknown then, as other mundane matters competed for attention during one’s lucid intervals.

Recently, the element of surprise was lost in the preemptive, anticlimactic announcement of the BERD. For example, this year March 18 was reported as the day of reckoning about a week before the fact, exacerbating the agonizing wait by the Unsure.

However, the emotional process flow remains basically the same. Whether the BERD is unknown (as in 1970) or preannounced (as in 2014), the emotions follow a similar pattern. On the first day of March, a high level of anxiety starts to cause sleepless nights for the Unsure. The level of anxiety seems to be in inverse proportion to the certainty of passing.

Anxiety ends on the BERD, when it becomes excitement, which turns into jubilation, and ultimately euphoria. Beer sales rise on the BERD, when the new lawyers (less than 30 percent of the examinees, the usual success rate) toast to their success, and the rest seek solace in alcohol in even bigger quantities. Misery, it appears, is in direct proportion to alcohol consumption.

In my case, anxiety wasn’t that intense even when the days rolled into March. Not only was I then holding a new business-executive position where work-related stress and the learning curve of the new job crowded out the less urgent passing-the-bar concern, I was also quite confident of having made it.

If I recall correctly, I got hold of a list of our exam questions and unofficial answers from a lawyers’ publication. I compared my answers to these references and traced them further to my books, meticulously assigning a grade to my answer in every question in all subjects. Extrapolating my assumed weighted average rating to what I supposed would be the top rating, I thought I would land among the top 10—in seventh place at best. I had underrated myself.

Past 11 p.m. of March 5, 1970, two days before the BERD, I was roused from sleep by loud knocks on the door of my room. I heard a house mate calling my name and saying that Dean Palma was on the phone. Half-awake, I couldn’t immediately rationalize why the dean would call me at that time of the night. I was bewildered.

Teodulo Palma was the law dean of the University of the East, where I finished law. Two years before that phone call, while still an irregular, fourth-year law student and a regular absentee, I was summoned by Dean Palma to his office. He told me that I had exceeded the allowable number of absences, and warned that I might not be allowed to graduate if I persisted. I had thought that perfect or near-perfect scores in the written tests that he gave my civil law class could compensate for absenteeism, but it wasn’t to be. I sensed that he had mixed feelings about this student.

I was then the financial controller of a large firm whose responsibilities created an irreconcilable conflict between office time and school time. Something had to give. Heeding the dean’s warning, I gave up my job and lost a bit of personal pride and lots of money. The dean and the call of law won.

I vividly recall portions of my phone dialogue with Dean Palma on that fateful night:

DP: I’m Dean Palma. I’m calling about the bar exams.

Me: I passed, sir?

DP: You didn’t only pass, you’re either first or second. The Supreme Court is still deliberating.

Me: (silence for about five seconds)

DP: Did you hear me, Maderazo?

Me: Ah, yes, sir.

DP: Ok, bring four copies of your picture for the newspapers early morning tomorrow to my house (he gave me an address in New Manila, Quezon City).

After the phone call, I went back to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. Wild, fantastic thoughts bordering on the preposterous crossed my mind: I could be a Supreme Court justice one day! If I get the top place, I would be sent to Harvard for my master’s degree, my school’s reward for bar exam first-placers! I would be in politics, possibly a congressman, unmindful of the public perception that one could count honest politicians by the fingers of one hand and still have fingers to spare!

Still wide awake at past midnight, I phoned my brother, who told me to come over for a celebration. The full bottle of Scotch was almost empty by 5:30 a.m.

On the BERD, March 7, 1970, the official results were in all the newspapers. From the top: Ronaldo Zamora, 87.3 percent; Nicolas Maderazo, 87.25 percent; Franklin Drilon, etc. For the first time in my life, my name and picture were on the front page as part of the banner story in all the leading dailies. Overpowered by the BERD euphoria, I didn’t seem to care that I missed Harvard by 0.05 percent! (Incidentally, a certain Miriam P. Defensor was in the same 1970 batch of new lawyers. Her name was not in the top 10 list.)

The BERD euphoria usually lingers in the new lawyer’s system for months, or even a year. Why did one choose to become an attorney, in the first place, and what does one intend to do with the title now? How soon the euphoria disappears is to be mainly determined by the number and gravity of the usual fumbles a new lawyer makes. The more mistakes, the faster the euphoria vanishes.

In any case, the euphoria fades as the daily stuff puts new lawyers on notice that being one isn’t the only thing that counts. Bigger things or challenges (the trite word frequently used by people scared of problems) will soon shrink their euphoria-bloated heads.

This will put new lawyers where they ought to be—feet firmly on the ground, ready for the real fight. Unburdened by the euphoria, real lawyers bounce back from beginners’ missteps and soar to greater heights sooner than they expect.

Lawyer Nicolas G. Maderazo is also a CPA and is now retired.