On Not Surviving Strict Scrutiny
I had spent days preparing.
My professor had already told us that our Constitutional Law exam was going to deal with the issues in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board. I had read the opinion several times. I spent two days locked in a room with a classmate going over possible lines of attack, working through hypotheticals, pushing through all the doctrine we could manage.
I left the law library late on the eve of the exam, exhausted. I could barely think about anything except the exam. As I came down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk, I was siezed by a sudden overwhelming panic. It struck me hard, a terrible punch in the gut that doubled me over, breathless and nauseous. I stopped and dry-heaved once, wondering whether I was about to throw up the contents of my stomach--and then remembered that, other than coffee, there was nothing left to throw up.
I went to bed and slept fitfully. I was able to arrive at school early enough to stop by chapel before the exam. I knelt and prayed silently. I was not alone.
The exam began. I had prepared, but I was not ready. I fumbled issues, mismanaged time, scrambled to address all my major points. All of my preparation boiled down to a few badly-scrawled words that I hope only my examiner will ever read.
It is fitting, then, that the last sentence of my exam is unfinished. It is as incomplete as the arguments it was meant to advance, and as inartful as its author.
Given my sorry performance, I will be lucky to survive.
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ouij) wrote,
