Failing the California bar exam 47 times

I was talking to someone today who passed the bar. The bar pass rate in California is less than 50%. People who took the California exam in July just found out a couple weeks ago whether or not they passed. That's four months of waiting, of pretending you're not worried too much, of trying to lead a normal life, but secretly (or not so secretly) existing in hopeful dread of the highly anticipated day.

The California bar sucks. There's no better word for it. S-U-C-K-S. Even as I say it, I know that anyone who hasn't been through the test won't get it. It's impossible to really give life to the suckiness of it all. It's like a woman trying to tell a man, "Giving birth is painful." Imagine giving birth to triplets.

And each of those triplets has a head the size of a watermelon.

And somehow, these babies are either half-porcupine or half-cactus.

Now imagine going through all of that 48 times. Thankfully, I did not have to take the bar for a quarter century before passing. But this guy did!

I admire him. I don't think I would've lasted that long. There's a small part of me that also thinks he's kinda nuts. He's like one of those H&M first-day shoppers - admirable, but in a crazy way. And definitely persistent.

It's estimated that Maxcy Filer probably spent about $50,000 between 1966 and 1991 on fees, bar review courses, and transportation and lodging related to taking the bar exam; and Filer says the figure is probably about right. When he started, he said, a bar review course cost $100. Later, he was paying $1,000.

Over the years, all his children went to college, and two of his sons, who were in elementary school when their father started taking the bar exam, became lawyers. And he finally did it himself.

The lesson here? Persevere. Don't give up, because anything is possible with enough persistence. Anything.