after 6 years (brace yourself, this is going to be a long one)

well here i am.

sabi nga ng daddy ko, abogado na ako. and all of a sudden i don't know what to do anymore.

when i was applying for a college course, i didn't know what to take up. i didn't know what i wanted to be. i had wanted to be a nurse back in grade school then thought better of it as i grew older. (maybe i should have pursued that line of work. might be filthy rich by now. hehehe)

going back, i never had a plan in life. for a moment there i wanted to go into politics, like my grandmother and my dad. that dream faded into oblivion really, really fast.

so there i was, a high school student without the faintest idea what i wanted to take up in college. the guidance counselor didn't help any. this is the gist of his evaluation:

"Will be good at anything she endeavors, except maybe a career in politics."

duh. i could have told you that.

still, i didn't know what to do. so like any girl in a quandary, i asked my older sister who was in college. she gave me pretty sensible advice. or so i thought. by the time she was through with me, i was convinced that i wanted to take up computer science. and in default of that, interior design. a year ago i realized that i applied for those courses because my sister's two best friends were in those courses at that time.

thing is, i ended up in geodetic engineering (go figure) and stayed there for about 3 years. i got dismissed from the college of engineering and ended up in ... (drum roll please) interior design.

yes. my second choice when i filled up the application for college. i didn't go there in the first place even if i had passed because I HAD NO TALENT FOR IT. so when i got dismissed, and i applied again, i was on tenterhooks. my grade point average was fine. but hell, i didn't know how to draw and there was a talent test.

for some reason the head of the department thought my drawing of the queen anne chair was passable, so i got accepted.

barely made it though, what with all the drawings, renderings, etc.... my theories were fine, the executions were... okay i guess.

i graduated.

the year i graduated from college was the year my sister took her oath as a lawyer. i had been toying around with the idea of taking up law. just to see what it was like... bottom line was i didn't want to go to work just yet .

but i still decided to take the board exam. it seemed like a logical next step. but my sister (yes the same one who advised me on what to take for college) told me that it would not be practical to go to review classes because i was planning on taking up law.

and once again, i believed her.

my classmates sent me materials for the exam, and they went with me when i applied. they religiously attended the night classes, taught me how to draw, to color, to fix the perspectives of my plates.. the works. and me... i slept.

some of my materials have remained unopened till now.

to make the long story short, i failed the exam. i did not study, nor was i really paying attention in school. imagine this: the question was how many springs are needed for a so-and-so sized sofa. imagine me, moving around in my chair, trying to figure out how many springs will poke my butt at any given moment, and the distance of the pokes.

so yes, i failed. but i took the entrance exam to law school. passed. went for the interview. passed.

what followed was 4 years of fun. i was failing exams, getting screamed at during recitations, losing sleep. learned to play billiards, discovered the acoustic music scene, gained an unmentionable number of pounds, lost boyfriends, gained some...others...

then the bar came along. failed the first one (i still firmly believe my paper was switched with that of the person who placed number 10.) i was working at that time.

i kept on working until about a month and a half before the next bar exam. studied some, played super bounce, studied some more. took the exam.

i passed this time around. now here i am.

after the euphoria, the celebration, the endless bottles of beer... here i am.

i will never have to worry about getting good grades again. about passing. about knowing enough to get by and gain approval, and consequently, receiving a passable grade.

suddenly getting the grade doesn't matter anymore.

and i don't know how i feel. on the one hand the happy go lucky life of a student is something i enjoyed extremely. the pampered life of the bar exam taker i also enjoyed, despite the frequent stress attacks.

i'm relieved of course. and at the same time lost. it was like those few months during high school before going to college. what to do next?

i can't ask my ever reliable crazy sister. she's taking the bar too.

so i guess i'm going to have to do some soul searching... what to do next. i have a host of choices: ambulance driver? bartender? electrician? taxi driver? erotic tagalog romance novel writer? baby sitter? teacher? the list goes on and on. except politics of course. but i'm a lawyer.

i took the oath last friday. while in my slinky dress under my shiny black toga, dying because of my 4 inch heels, i thought -- this is what i had worked for. i didn't want to be a lawyer but there i was. and as i listened to the speeches and watched the faces of the people taking the oath around me, i realized that if i didn't really want to be there, i wouldn't have been.

i have never been one to just keep on going at something just because i had started already. i could have quit, and yet i pressed on. this must have been something i wanted to do. maybe it is. i'm on my way to being sure....

another chapter of my life is over, i guess. and i'm closing that book. what happens next, you'll read about it here. or not.

but for now it -- it's finally over.