MANILA, Philippines — Rosula Calacala, at 62 years old, passed the 2023 bar examinations on her first take.
Calacala is only one of the 3,812 — or 36.77 percent of the 10,387 examinees — who passed the exams recently. She had to travel from Isabela to check the results.
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She said her undergraduate course was accounting, after which she immediately found a job to support her family.
“I have already finished [providing for] my children and I don’t have anything to do, so I studied,” Calacala said, speaking partly in Filipino, in a chance interview with INQUIRER.net.
She finished her law studies at the Northeastern College in Isabela.
“I took law school for four years. I had no failing grades — and I’m a working student,” Calacala added, ecstatically.
She attributed her success in the exams to both God and her children.
Calacala’s has this message to fellow seniors who wish to be lawyers:
“Just take law school. You will not know your future — if you will pass. But for as long as you don’t take law school, you will surely not become a lawyer,” Calacala said.