Good idea?

Today I learned just how little can pass for competence on the California bar exam. Prof. Honigsberg, Superstar, led us through the first of our Performance Tests, where we're given a set of facts and made to write hypothetical memos responding to those facts. The professor began class by sharing some stories, all true, of people who had passed the exam, despite all their better efforts. Since I do not underestimate my incompetence, I still have my nose to the grindstone. (I mean, who wants to be dumber than what I'm about to tell you?) But get a load of this:

1) Several years ago, a woman called up Prof. H and told him about her plan to get a good night's sleep before the exam: she would take half a sleeping pill. When Prof. H expressed his concern she reassured him she often took half a pill without consequence. When she was still awake at midnight the night before, however, she decided to take the other half. At 1am, she was still staring at the clock, so she took another whole pill. No dice. By 3am, she was bouncing off the walls so she popped a third, entire pill - six times her usual dose. That did the trick. By 6am, when her alarm went off, she barely could get up. She took several cold showers, drank two pots of coffee, did jumping jacks, and slumped off to the test site. She later told the professor that she was just conscious enough during the exam to realize she had circled A, B, C, and D for one question. At lunch, she considered giving up altogether. Instead, she made more coffee, did more jumping jacks and finished out the day. The result? Pass.

2) A San Diego man, who already had failed four times, recently called up the professor to ask if he'd be able to provide some one-on-one help. The professor declined because of his demanding lecture schedule. But the next day, a local veterans' association called the professor again to tell him that the SD man was a special case: he was a combat veteran who had suffered brain damage when a grenade had exploded at his feet - couldn't the professor do something? So the professor and the veteran engaged in a sort of correspondence course, with the veteran mailing practice tests to the professor for grading. Because of his brain damage, the veteran read at an extremely slow pace, about eighty minutes to read only a portion of the extensive essay booklet. Prof. Honigsberg instructed him, sternly, to start writing at the end of eighty-five minutes, no matter how little he had read of the essay prompt. They went back and forth like this for several months, the veteran never making it through an entire essay prompt. When the results came out in November? Pass.

3) A couple years ago, a woman was taking a shower on the third day of the exam, slipped and fell, and got a concussion. She passed, too.

So, really, it doesn't take much. The trick, however, is making sure that I have even that little.