By Dan Horn
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Stacey DeGraffenreid listens to a question from daughter Tatiana as she studies for the bar exam. (Glenn Hartong photos) | ZOOM |

        A young woman slides a tape into a VCR and turns to the packed auditorium. Rows of law students stare back at her.

        “Are you ready?”

        Stacey DeGraffenreid is near the front, poised on a plastic chair. Her desk is bolted to the concrete floor.

        She is here on this sunny morning in late May for the first day of a six-week class that is supposed to prepare her for the Ohio Bar Exam. The test is two months away, and she must pass to become a lawyer.

        Stacey is afraid she won't be ready.

        She's spent three years juggling her time among law school, a job and her 5-year-old daughter. But preparing for the exam is the hardest thing she's ever done.

        Once a confident student and basketball star, Stacey now is unsure of herself. Years of practice on the basketball court are nothing compared to this. She must practice longer and better than ever before.

DeGraffenreid takes the law review class at UC. | ZOOM |

        The lights dim and the washed-out image of a law professor in a blue suit appears on the big screen. “Do not let life get in the way of the bar exam,” he says. “You have to study. You have to prepare. You have to do the best you can.”

        The professor-on-tape describes the exam as “horrific.” Three days long. Two hundred multiple choice questions. Twelve essays. Two 90-minute tests that require students to draft a will or write a legal memo.

        No topic is off limits. Anything covered in three years of law school can appear on the exam.

        “Good Lord,” someone mutters a few rows behind Stacey.

        And one more thing, the professor says: The exam is tougher than ever because the minimum passing score has gone up twice in five years. “When I took the exam,” he jokes, “it was easy.”

        No one laughs.

        Stacey sinks in her chair. She doesn't need another scare. She's scared enough already. She needs to know how to practice for this exam while working a part-time job and raising a child alone.

        Up on the big screen, the professor drones on. “You need to focus everything on this test. You need to get your life in order.”

        Stacey reaches into her bookbag and pulls out her schedule. She takes a long look at her life, a tangle of scribbles and smudges.

        There is nothing orderly about it.
        Two weeks after the first class, and panic is setting in.

        The daily schedule Stacey made last month is a failure. She studies until 3 a.m. but barely keeps up with the class. She writes hundreds of flash cards but has little time to study them.

        She had hoped the class would help her practice better. Instead, she's overwhelmed by the growing pile of books and notes on her kitchen table.

        Stacey calls her friend Janel Fitzhugh. Janel passed the exam last year and is now a lawyer in Cincinnati.

        “You need to make time,” Janel says.

        “But how?”

        “You just do.”

        Janel tells her to carve out several hours a day for nothing but study. Don't answer the phone. Don't do chores. Send her daughter, Tatiana, to grandma's house.

        Of all the things claiming Stacey's time, Tatiana is the hardest to put aside. Stacey's study time is Tatiana's mortal enemy. “Come read to me,” she'll say, pleading with her big brown eyes. “Pleeeeeease.”

        Stacey used to read to her all the time. Before bed. At breakfast. Curled up on the couch, Tatiana in her arms. But when she's practicing for the exam, it's hard to put down A Guide to Civil Procedure and pick up Clifford, the Big Red Dog.

        She tells herself that sacrificing some time with Tatiana now will be worth it in the long run. A legal career means being a better provider for her daughter, being an example of what a single woman can accomplish.

        Stacey looks at her watch. Time to get Tatiana at grandma's.

        “I'm always looking at my watch,” Stacey tells Janel. “There's always one more thing to do.”
        Stacey's days run together, a blur of classes, work, errands and study. With six weeks left before the exam, she struggles to balance study time against the demands of her life.

        At 9 a.m. on a dreary Wednesday in June, Stacey is back in bar exam class. The auditorium is a mess. Cans of Mountain Dew litter the floor. Notebooks and styrofoam cups cover the desks.

        Stacey jots down legal terms as quickly as the professor on video rattles them off: Affirmative defenses. Voluntary dismissals. Default judgments. Hypotheticals.

        “I know you hate me by now,” the professor says.

        Dozens of heads nod in unison across the auditorium.

        “But better you hate me now than a month from now, when you're taking the exam.”

        Stacey is certain she will still hate him a month from now.

        She looks at her notes, almost 20 pages. She will not have time to read them today.

        12 noon: She rushes down the hall to the alumni office at the University of Cincinnati. She's late for work.

        Her task today is to stick pre-printed labels on hundreds of envelopes. The same kind of grunt office work she did for years after graduating college with a business degree.

        She puts on headphones and slips an exam study tape into the machine. “The key, gang, is organization,” says the guy on tape. “You have to get organized.”

        Stacey slaps on another label. Her half-opened bookbag is on the floor. Notes and index cards are spilled all around it.

        3 p.m.: The conference room is empty when Stacey sneaks in for a cold slice of pizza. On the way out, she runs into Barb Watts from the dean's office.

        “You look exhausted,” Barb tells her. “Are you getting enough sleep? Are you eating right?”

        Stacey puts down the pizza. She gives Barb a look that says, "What do you think?'

        “You have to take care of yourself. This is a marathon, you know?”

        Stacey has been up until 3 a.m. every night this week. She reads until her vision blurs, puts in a study tape and falls asleep at the kitchen table.

        “I know,” she says. “I know.”

        4 p.m.: The checkout line is short but still not moving fast enough. Stacey wants to get home for an hour of studying before she picks up Tatiana.

        Her cart is filled with Pizza Dunks and toaster waffles. If she can't toast it or microwave it in five minutes, it doesn't go into the cart.

        She stares blankly at a National Enquirer. BOB HOPE'S BATTLE FOR LIFE! ALLY MCBEAL STAR'S SECRET WEDDING!

        “I know I'm forgetting something,” she says. “I'm always forgetting something.”

        5 p.m.: The kitchen table is piled high with workbooks and flash cards. Stacey flips through the cards, one after another.

        They are covered with abbreviations and definitions. “An offer is a manifestation of an intention to contract ... ”

        She shakes her head. Stares at the ceiling. Checks the answer. Turns the card.

        6 p.m.: Stacey plops Tatiana in front of the computer and settles in at her parents' dining room table. They're waiting for Stacey's mom to finish making spaghetti, a welcome change from the frozen dinners they get at home.

        Stacey studies multiple choice questions while Tatiana giggles and the computer blares Schoolhouse Rock singalongs. Stacey is preparing for a big practice test this weekend.

        It will tell her how much she knows, and how much she doesn't.

        “Look Mommy!”

        The computer sings a math lesson to a staccato beat. “Five, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 ...”

        Tatiana joins in for the last line.

        “Time's up! Ready or not, here I come!”

        7:30 p.m.: Stacey watches Tatiana climb into a chair at the kitchen table, a bottle of blue Gatorade in her arms. “Be careful,” Stacey says.

        She'll spend the next two hours with her daughter, reading from books like Make a Face and Guess How Much I Love You. Then she'll turn to her own books. She figures she might be in bed by 2 a.m.

        “Ooooops!”

        Tatiana spills blue Gatorade across the table. Stacey rushes over with a towel, just in time to save her flash cards.
        Stacey arrives at the lecture hall early for the start of the practice test. It's late June and the real exam is one month away.

        She rolls a pencil back and forth in her hand as a young blonde woman writes on the blackboard. Students will have three hours for the first 100 questions, three hours for the next 100.

        Stacey does the math: 1.8 minutes per question.

        She used to live for moments like this, back when she was a star basketball player at Princeton High School. Time running out. Big pressure. Do or die.

        But the old confidence is missing today. She's tired and scared. Afraid of what she might learn about herself after taking this practice test.

        All she has energy left to care about is being ready for the bar exam. Being ready for her chance.

        “Are you ready?” The woman steps away from the blackboard and checks her watch. “You may begin.”

        Stacey opens the test book. The first question covers half a page. Racing, she needs more than 1.8 minutes just to read it.

        “Concentrate,” she says under her breath. “Concentrate.”
        That evening, Stacey stretches out on the living room floor and slides the answer key over her test. She takes the cap off a red marker and puts a big X next to the first question.

        She moves down the page. Puts another red X in the margin.

        Bad start.

        She spends the next hour grading her own multiple choice test. She misses roughly half the questions.

        She reminds herself this is just a practice test. But with just four weeks of practice left, she wonders how she will be better in time for the real exam.

        The instructor told them this would happen. She said the practice test is intentionally harder than the real thing, that 50 percent was an average score.

        There is still time to improve, the instructor said. There is time to prepare.

        Stacey shakes her head and stares at the test.

        All she sees is red ink spreading across the page.

        • THURSDAY, PART 3: Test day arrives.

        • TUESDAY, PART 1: Taking the bar, making a future

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