“I am a failure. I spent six weeks straight, 10 to 12 hours a day, studying and it was so important for me to take this. And to not pass gets your spirit down and just makes you want to give up.” said Kim Kardashian after taking the “baby bar”, an exam given at the end of the first year of studying for a law degree to people not going to traditional law school.
Only people who live in California, Vermont, Washington, and Virginia can study to become a lawyer this way. The other states require four years of college and then three years of law school. People who take the alternate different route like Kardashian must study in apprenticeship four years with a lawyer or judge and are required to take the First-Year Law Students’ Examination (FYLSE). According to Kardashian, “The test is seven hours long and has four hour-long essays that you have to write, and then it has 300 multiple choice questions.” Students have three chances to pass the exam in order to earn law school credit. Only 21% pass upon taking the exam the first time. She scored a 474 and needed 560 to pass.
Kardashian has already taken the exam a second time, in November 2020, at the urging of her sisters who warned her that she’d lose momentum if she waited to take it in June 2021. But if a 40-year old mother of four who hadn’t taken exams for 20 years, as well as being a business owner and going through a difficult divorce publicly isn’t enough, she took her second “baby bar” while suffering through COVID-19! That’s a lot on her plate.
Many hesitate and worry about doing well in school and getting into a college. It is best to study well, gain all the knowledge, take the tests, put one’s best-but-real self on an application. Even then, the results may be disappointing. However, it can also end up with happy results! But first, one has to take the initiative and do it. Don’t listen to doubts inside and out.
It’s okay to whine about disappointment for a moment, but it’s not okay to give up without trying again, as many times allowed. Hopefully Kardashian used a different study tactic the second time, and if she has to take it again, that she will study differently in preparation for the third try.
But give up as she considered after the first attempt? Whether or not she re-took the test a year later, the year would still come. What should that year look like? Isn’t it better for an entire year to go by and to have done it rather than not try at all? Try? Try not? What did Yoda say?