Only a person who has taken the California Bar examination really understands how greuling the examination is and how much physical stamina taking the exam requires. In my quest to understand my performance, I know that I entered the exam physically and mentally exhausted.
I had sprained my back from too much sitting, studing for the bar exam. I was worried, at exam time, about not being able to sit on a metal chair (even with the pillow allowed), for so many hours. By the luck of the draw, I was able to negotiate a good chair which, although not painless, was a lifesaver in taking the exam.
The first morning of the exam, Examsoft failed to work; I had been provided the wrong instructions. Although I was able to resolve the computer issues, my hands were shaking, heart pounding, and I remember how my mind raced through the first essay; I was panicked about losing time. A little yogic breathing helped restore my sanity, but I was not "on my game."
The following day, family litigation and a vitriolic naysayer entered my mental arena; it took hours to regain my calm. We settled the case the following week, with three attorneys required to enforce a court order. These were deeply emotional issues.
These are all the things that my bar tutor discussed with me last night. A few weeks after the bar exam, sure enough, I sprained my back yet again. My blood pressure escalated and I developed acid reflux from the stress.
"Acch!" you say.
"Too much information!"
But, perhaps these brutally honest thoughts are something to consider as you, yourself, study for the equally brutal California bar examination.
What I have learned:
1. Enter the exam on top of your physical game. Exercise religiously. Eat well.
2. Even if you are prepared, if life events get you off your game, delay the exam. You need to be on top of your mental game.
3. Although I wrote practice essays and discussed them with my tutor, I needed to see my essays edited and graded with brutal honesty. I'm going to subscribe to baressays.com to see, first-hand, what a '50', '60' and '70+' grade looks like.
4. My largest weakness is the MBE. Now, I already know your comments. They range from, "you don't know the black letter law" to "you are not intelligent," neither of which are true. My mind, the mind of an artist, interprets multiple choice questions differently; I used to argue with my undergraduate and graduate professors about the ambiguous wording of their mulitple choice questions. I would win my point. But, MBE's haunted me throughout law school. To my credit, I did score 7 pts higher than my initial practice exams. It will take MY mind months of practice to really learn this game BUT I am committed to do it.
For those folks who have NOT taken the exam, please DON'T advise me to take another state's bar exam. I am where I want to be, at this stage of my life, and I know my life's game-plan. I am also not a 20 something or even a 30 something gal. It has taken years of preparation to be privileged to take the California Bar Exam - the LSAT exam and a J.D. degree. There's no stopping me now!
As to when I will take the exam (July 2009 or February 2010), the jury is still out...but I'll have my final answer by the end of this week. Ommmm...
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2 comments:
I know that gut-wrenching feeling once discovering I had not passed. I felt my whole world swirling around my head. I had plans! Now I had to re-think and re-do the studying. The actual taking of the bar is not that bad as compared to all the studying. I took a couple of weeks off, got over my sadness and jumped back in with a strong mindset. Two important things that I learned the second time around studying were: 1) to journal my MBE mistakes. I would write down (not type) the rule of law I missed. Go back to the question and understand why I missed it. The next time I was taking practice MBEs I read my journal before testing. By doing that I refreshed my mind of my past mistakes and I tended not to make them again. My score started to climb up; 2) take an area of law (like CP) and follow what I am about to say for each published CP exam. Read the exam, don't outline or guess what the issues will be because you have such little time doing that is a WASTE!!!! After reading the exam, go directly to the published answer, write down all the headings and the black letter law that is in the published answer. Go all the way through the essay doing this. Then look at the essay, what issues did it trigger in your mind? See how the published answer responded to that. I found that the published answer had more headings than I would have done. All those headings are points!!
For me, I knew I was supposed to do that but somehow I was not doing it correctly. One week before the bar my tutor said I was still scoring 60. That was what I was scoring in the first bar I took!! I was panicked. I even cried. But my tutor told me to go and do the above process of reading and writing headings and rule of law. I scrambled that last week before the bar to do that for every area of law. I learned how to properly respond to one issue. The February bar had a defamation issue that had many, many headings to it, including a First Amendment heading. In July 2008 I would have thought that was one heading.
This process teaches you what the answer should look like and you learn the area of law at the same time.
If I can go from scoring 60s one week before the bar to passing, YOU CAN TOO!
Thank you for your sage AND inspiring commentary. Your tips for both the MBE and the essays are excellent and I will follow them to the letter. CONGRATULATIONS on passing the bar exam in February 2009!
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