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: Butterflyfish

How to Survive the Bar Exam Itself

I post this for posterity, for those who will come next, and for myself, so when someone asks me what I did or how I did, I don't give lame or untrue answers.

Pack trail mix fixin's. My personal mix was Rice Chex cereal, whole almonds, craisins, and M&Ms in a small plastic sandwich bag.

Go to bed early each night. Seriously, I would watch one show, take some sleepy stuff (only needed it two nights actually), set three alarm clocks for 4:30 a.m. and go to sleep. No night time studying. At all. Not even a little. Really.

Wake up early, shower, dress, and review. And get some breakfast. And water. And caffeine. And caffeine. And then pee. Try to eat well during the day. Try to walk around or something slightly physical.

Say, hypothetically one of your friends comes up to you when you're milling around waiting to get through security in the morning, and say she's freaking the f**k out and saying the "F" word* and telling you about how much she studied the night before and how she's an anxiety ball etc., excuse yourself to the bathroom. And then lose her in the crowd. Because you do NOT need that.

MBE: On the morning of the MBE I did 50 warm up questions from BarBri's MPQ2 book -- one for which they expected me to get over 70% correct. I did because they were pretty easy. Doing that in the morning might freak some people out (OMG! I am getting stuff wrong! I will f-word!) I get that it might not be great for everyone. It worked for me because on any practice exam, my accuracy rate was always for sh*t during the first 20... I really think this helped me hit the ground running. It didn't hurt me anyway, and gave a me a sense of control.

Essay days: I was a fan of scanning my checklists before essay days, and I reread my personal outlines for wills/trusts, secured trans, commercial paper -- the subjects I was sure I'd get hit with and felt less confident about.

So that's how I survived the Bar.

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* The F word.

Full post as published by Butterflyfish on August 02, 2009 (boomark / email).