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1. Take the schedule your study program gives you. Study it for about five minutes. Throw it away and make your own schedule. (Unless you are one of those people and then highlight everything in pink once you have completed it and do every single freaking thing they tell you to do, but for the love of all things good, PLEASE don't tell anyone else about how you stuck to the schedule. And how tired you are. And how special and smart you are. ) That schedule is not really humanly possible to stick through (people start dropping like flies in week 3 of the damn thing) and frankly, it probably doesn't help you study the way YOU need to study. Attend lectures. Do practice problems. Write practice essays. Spend more time on subjects you stink at and less on those that you know pretty well. However, whatever schedule you come up with (even if it includes time for golf or mindless tv) should be stuck to as best as possible. Pick a way, any way, and go with it. (Tip 1A: Don't post on Twitter, your Facebook status, blog, Gmail chat or AIM away message about how much you accomplished. If you do this you will find that none of your friends will check any of your social media because not only do they not want to hear about it, frankly, they don't even believe you. Nature of the game. Be quiet.) 

2.  Schedule time for yourself. At first this seems easy but as you get more panicked and freaked out you start removing those precious blocks of down time in the name of "I can eat and breathe in August" and frankly? You are doing yourself no favors. Unless you want to be the chalk white hyper-ventilaty person the second morning of the bar exam that suddenly can't finish because OHMYGOODNESSITISJUSTTOOMUCH remember to leave yourself some time. Yoga, dinners out, shopping time, what have you. Remember your brain needs rest too. 

3.  Study in a way that helps YOU remember. For me, I wish I'd thought of making one page outline for each multi-state subject with the basics & blackline rules and then removed a bunch of important words, made 50 copies of the outline and sat down and filled in each word, over and over, slowly memorizing the lines, rules & must-know big points. After you finish those 50, take more words out and do another 50, slowly filling it all in until you can write each and every one page outline from memory. (I didn't hear of this until two days before the exam). This would have helped me- maybe you- and maybe not. The point is if listening helps you, find someone with the PMBR cd's and load them on your iPod and listen to them at night. If writing helps, make blank outlines & fill them in. Don't sit and read questions and essays because you think it might help- you should know how you learn by now & you should use that to your advantage. 

4. Give yourself a few days for THOSE SUBJECTS and then let them go. In Illinois THOSE SUBJECTS are commercial paper and secured transactions. You are bound to get one of them in an essay...they are fairly impossible to most people...and you probably are not going to understand them too much. Don't spend weeks on them. They are what- at most- two essays? Yeah that isn't good, but the odds of having both of them isn't good either. Give yourself TWO DAYS to work on those subjects and then prioritize. If spending a week trying to understand commercial paper is only going to net you one more overall point, spend that time better understanding wills and trusts so you can go from a meager 3 point essay to a 5 point essay or two (if you get both a wills and a trusts question).  You catch my drift? 

5.  Don't panic during the multi-state if you see elements of non-multi-state subjects in a question. Don't let that inkling of a secured transactions topic in the middle of a contracts question freak you out- those are most likely the throw-away questions, and frankly, a lot of other people are going to miss it too. It happens every year, so it isn't some huge plot by the State Board of Bar Examiners to destroy you in your tracks. Answer as best you can and move on. 

And finally, over-all, read your state's directions on what to wear and bring and what not to wear and bring to the exam. In Illinois you can't have water bottles, sorry buddy. You also have to take the bar exam in bare feet if you wear flip flops to your testing center. Virginia makes you wear court-room attire. The point is, don't let your mojo and confidence get thrown off by being told to change your clothes, throw away your pencils, or have your snacks removed because you are not following the rules five minutes before you get to break open the test booklet. 

1. Ha. I'm sorry for you. Please take your calendar, mark off June and July and start making plans without your significant other. Do not plan on birthing babies, getting married, closing on a house or moving during this time frame. (Ok fine, sometimes you can't reschedule things but you catch my drift) This person is going to have a one track mind and trying to insert other major life events during these few months will lead to frustration, tears and sleep exhaustion. LET THEM BE THE FREAKS THEY ARE BEING. 

2. Quietly write down every time they snap at you, are short with you, are mean to you, or don't unload the dishwasher. At the end of the day, look at the list and tear it up. When it is all over, demand they make it up to you (vacation, dinner out, a new handbag or suit, whatever floats your boat) but trying to call them out on it during this time frame is pointless and you'll end up angrier then you were. They will also miss their "torts" hour of studying and subsequently spend two days trying to figure out how to get that hour back. Accept that the person you love is now the MOST SELFISH PERSON EVER and dream of ways for them to make it up to you in August. 

3. Provide food and clean clothes. With three weeks left to the exam the person you love will start rationalizing why these things are not necessary to survive the next three weeks and will attempt to cut them out. That or they will order a pizza every. single. night. and you might get sick of that. Help them out and make sure they have clean skivvies and some leftovers in the fridge to heat up. They will remember this afterwards and your make-up vacation will be boosted from Las Vegas to Hawaii. Or something like that. 

4. When they wake you up at three in the morning with nausea, tears or uncontrollable shakes, please murmur sweet nothings to them. Do not try to rationalize with them. Do not tell them it will all be ok and you know they will pass. Provide supportive words, realize this person is not sane in the head, and try to convince them to just go to sleep. You can laugh about this after they pass the exam (but not during the time frame between the exam and the results). 

5.  Do not question their studying diligence or lack thereof. Do not question them as though they are spending too much time studying (trust me, they are not) but don't try to insinuate they are not studying enough. Plenty of people play golf the entire summer leading up the exam and pass with flying colors. Plenty of people study every single day for 18 hours a day and pass with flying colors. And plenty of people do one of the above and bomb terribly. Don't question how the person is trying to go about it. Let them do it their way & offer any suggestions after the fact, not during. 

Next week I'll offer some tips on surviving the Waiting Period when you don't know if you passed or not, but I'll go ahead and give the clue that it involves PRAY YOUR STATE DOESN'T CHANGE THEIR NOTIFICATION PROCEDURES TWO DAYS BEFORE RESULTS ARE DUE OUT and a few other small tidbits of wisdom. In the meantime, discuss as you see fit and please, feel free to chime in with questions or advice.