Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [26]
My academic experiences during the second and third years of law school were much more enjoyable. I began to develop a greater sense of what the study of law was about. By the third year I even began to regard the law school environment as intellectually nurturing, not simply challenging. I adjusted to being away from my home and family. I grew socially and personally, becoming less bashful and reserved.
By the end of my last semester at Yale, I had decided to work in Washington, D.C. Though I had an interest in civil rights, I chose to go into a law firm that represented corporate interests, a decision based mostly on financial considerations. I had accumulated considerable debt from college and law school. Moreover, I looked forward to being financially secure myself and being able to offer my parents some of the things they otherwise could not afford. With school behind me, only the bar examination stood between me and the dream of practicing law. Like most of my classmates, I became obsessed with passing. I spent mornings in a review course, afternoons outlining that day’s lecture, and evenings studying the next day’s material. The sixth week of the course seemed like an eternity. And as the date of the exam approached, I grew more and more anxious and so filled with information and mnemonic devices for recalling it that I thought I might burst.
I moved to Washington in July 1980 just a few days before the two-day examination. Tuesday, July 29, could not come quickly enough. The fact that the following day was my birthday was of little importance. The only important thing about July 30, 1980, was that it would be the last day of the bar examination. On the morning before the examination I was too excited to eat, managing only a few bites. As I sat through the timed segments of the examination, years’ worth of information poured onto the pages and out of my head, forever. By the afternoon of the first day, my hands were starting to cramp from writing and tension. It did not help that everyone around me was as uptight as I. That only egged me on. One student walked out and turned in his exam in the middle of the afternoon, apparently giving up. Another left the auditorium-sized classroom and paced back and forth in front of the door for minutes. At the end of the second day, I knew that my endurance was spent and I could take no more. But that didn’t matter, as it was over.
I left the room having no sense of whether I had passed or failed. No matter, I told myself, the exam is offered twice every year. I’d take it until I did pass. Each day of the months that followed I thought of it. Then, in November, only a few days before Thanksgiving holiday, the results were published. My name was on the list of those who had passed. But even in all our celebration, the most that I could feel was relief.
I had a circle of friends in place, friends from law school who had also chosen to locate in D.C. These were individuals with whom I developed some of my closest relationships ever, a closeness that still remains. Some took government positions; others went into private practice. My classmate Susan Hoerchner, who moved to Washington in the summer of 1980 to take a job at the National Labor Relations Board, became my confidante, one of the few people I would later tell about my experiences as assistant to Clarence Thomas. Kim Taylor, another classmate, initially chose a Washington law firm but then went to the public defender’s office, eventually becoming its director. Sonia Jarvis would come to Washington in 1981 after her clerkship, and for a time we shared a two-story row house on Capitol Hill.
By late fall, Washington was bustling with speculation about the coming change of administration. The Reagan administration would certainly