Law Students

Useless Thoughts on the Barzam

It's been a little over two weeks since i took the barzam in Useless State. In the days immediately following the exam I kept feeling like I should write a final post reflecting on the whole process, but every time I sat down to write it my brain just hurt from the whole process and I ended up walking away from it. I'm forcing myself to finish the post now because at some point I think I'm going to want to look back on it, either because I passed and will just be reminiscing about the whole process or because I failed and will be starting the process all over again come January.

What I did to prepare for Useless State Barzam
I signed up for both of the prep courses offered in my state, Barbri and Kaplan PMBR. PMBR was geared specifically towards the MBE portion of the exam while Barbri provided the preparation for every subject tested on the exam as well as MBE prep.

I went to every Barbri lecture (I did the classroom version- I don't know anyone who did the iPod but I've heard good things) and focused on the lectures like i had not focused on anything since college. This meant I took nothing but my lecture handouts and a pen to write with. No computer to distract me, no iPhone to email from, etc. Others in my class did use their laptops during the lectures but I noticed that they did spend an awful lot of time "multi-tasking" with Facebook, blogging, emailing, online shopping etc. Granted, I did a lot of "multi-tasking" in law school and still graduated with a decent (but not stellar) GPA, but the barzam is different and I knew that I had very little time to prepare so I was proactive and took away all sources of in class distraction before it became a problem. Another note on Barbri, I never read the long outlines prior to class. I stuck with what was taught in lecture and if there was a particular area that I was having problems with understanding after the lecture I went back and supplemented with the big outline. I had friends who read the long outlines before every lecture and they spent a good 2-3 hours on most days doing that. You have to find what works for you, but I know that spending 2-3 hours reading outlines full of material that in the end isn't all that important would not have been helpful for me, regardless of whether I passed or not.

After my barbri class every day I made flashcards that covered the material taught in lecture. I was not allowed to be done for the day until the flashcards were done. I ended up with more than 2000 flashcards by the time I was done. In looking back I'm not sure that the flashcards really helped and I probably wasted a lot of time doing them. I didn't really use the flashcards once they were made, but the process of making the cards involved reviewing the lecture notes and putting things in my own words, which I'm sure did help more than I know right now. About two weeks out from the exam I started making condensed outlines of all of the essay topics. I found that to be far more helpful than the flashcards. I should have figured out sooner that outlining would be better for me than flashcards because outlining was what I always did in law school. I very rarely made flashcards in law school but I decided to do cards because I did them for every closed book exam I had first year and I was convinced that the only way I could memorize material was with flashcards. As I pointed out awhile ago, flashcards should not be made for the barzam just because everyone else is making them . But adding to that, flashcards should also not be made just because you started making them for some topics and feel like you have to have them for every single topic regardless of whether or not they are actually helping. I decided not to outline the MBE subjects. For some reason I felt more comfortable as a whole with the MBE topics. To review those in the final week I ended up making these colorful charts.

If I had to do it all over again I wouldn't waste the time or money on Kaplan PMBR. The MBE prep that barbri provided was more than adequate and the PMBR questions were unnecessarily hard (they purposely make their simulated MBE that is a part of the 3 day course WAY harder than the MBE itself) and the review of the simulated exam was poor to say the very least. With the 3 day PMBR course being so close to the barzam itself at that point in the prep period it definitely would have been more valuable to spend those 3 days learning essay topics or doing practice problems on my own. The 6 day course at the beginning was also not all that helpful and while I suppose it did give me a brief foundation in all of the MBE subjects heading into barbri I think that week right after graduation would have been better spent relaxing and getting ready for the actual review crunch to begin the following week with the start of barbri.

Overall I should have done more practice for every portion of the exam. Granted I don't know if I passed or not yet, but in the days leading up to the exam I was panicked that I hadn't done enough practice and the only reason for this panic was that I hadn't done enough. I did about 1000 MBE questions. While it's not a numbers game, nor is there a magic number of MBE questions to get to before exam day, I didn't feel like I had done enough questions on a consistent basis leading up to the exam. The recommendation is to do about 36 questions per day, which should take just over an hour to complete if you use the full allotted time of 1.8 minutes per question. I had entire weeks where I did no questions. I buckled down the last two weeks and did long sets of 100-200 questions each day, which was probably good for getting my stamina for the actual exam ready, but part of the MBE is learning tricks that you only learn by seeing similar questions over and over and over again. I cringe at the thought of how many questions I missed on the real exam just from the fact that I didn't do the other 2000 MBE practice questions that I had at my disposal.

As far as the essays and performance tests went I read most of the sample answers that were given in the essay and PT books in the days leading up to the exam and I practiced about 20 essays over the course of the summer, but I should have done more. On the practices I had done I was having a problem finishing them on time and I was having problems organizing and writing clearly. Forcing myself to do more essays would have helped with both of those things. I tended to avoid essays like the plague when I was prepping because very frankly they downright scared me. Since they scared me I should have practiced doing them until I was blue in the face. For some reason I wasn't worried at all about the performance tests early on in the game. Everyone who took the exam last year told me that there was no reason to worry about them and that since I had a ton of writing experience in law school I would be fine. But then about two weeks before the exam I figured out the math and discovered that the PTs alone could save a seriously bad essay performance. I made sure to read every sample PT that barbri gave us, but walking into the exam I definitely felt like I would have been more confident on the PT if I had done even just 1 or 2 more as practice.

The Barzam Itself

A lot of people say that you should take at least the day before, if not the 2-3 days before the Bar Exam totally off from studying. I fully intended to do this. But as the exam got closer the panic set in and I suddenly felt like I knew absolutely nothing. In a phone call with BFF on the Sunday before the exam I was literally losing it because I was stressed that I was supposed to be taking Monday off and didn't feel like I could. She stopped me in my tracks, asked me exactly why I had to take Monday off, pointed out that there was no absolute rule that said I had to take Monday off and then pointed out that my entire life I have procrastinated and crammed, so why should this be any different? She was right. Although the bar is not something that you can cram for in the 12 hours, 2 days, even 1 week before the day, I knew that the only way I was going to not absolutely hurl walking into the exam room on Tuesday was if I studied on Monday too. So I did. I took a break in the afternoon to see a movie with some friends, but for the most part I studied all day. I even studied Monday evening over dinner with Trivia Boy (he was studying too- and probably more freaked out than I was). I went home, tried to sleep, but was too hyped up, so I got up at 3:30am and proceeded to look over sample essay answers, my outlines, and my charts until I left my house for the testing center at 6:15. I consumed 4 regular cups of coffee and 2 energy drinks before 7am and I had another energy drink during lunch that day. I didn't fall asleep during the exam, I typed like a maniac the entire exam, and I have no idea if I passed or not. I took plenty of time on the performance tests and managed to finish in the allotted time for those. I also managed to write something for each and every essay, including the sub questions, but typed up until the moment time was called in both sessions. Hopefully I put enough down on the page to pass. Point is, I absolutely threw all of the conventional wisdom out the door for the first day of the exam. I don't know if I passed, there are days where I feel like I certainly failed, but point is, if I passed then this is what worked for me. If I didn't pass then it's a lesson that I need to put in way more prep work up front in the study period and not wait until the last minute.

Once essay day was over I felt much much better. That seemed to be the general consensus of everyone taking the exam. Sure the MBE isn't exactly easy, but it's not as terrifying as the essays either. The MBE is something that you pretty much know you can handle walking in, you're not facing the stress of facing an essay in a topic that you barely know anything about. So I did get a good amount of sleep the night before the MBE, and walked into the testing center feeling at ease instead of like I wanted to hurl myself off the roof of the building. I tended to be very fast on my MBEs all summer, the actual test day was no different. I typically finish 100 questions in 2 hours. I took it a little slower on test day, making sure to carefully read everything and take a short break half way through each set of 100 and even doing that I still finished 45 minutes early in both sessions. Since you can't leave the testing center I just folded up my sweatshirt on the table and took a little cat nap. I had friends who were worried that I had done this, they thought I should have used the extra time to check answers, etc. I decided against that because I have an incredible ability to change answers that were correct the first time. In fact, I made it a policy to not change any answers once I had selected an answer. When I was practicing I noticed that 85% of the time where I changed an answer, the first one I picked had been right. It wasn't worth it to possibly change a wrong answer to a correct one when I only had a 15% chance of actually doing that.

What I would do differently

If I have to do all of this again, either because I didn't pass or because I end up taking another jurisdiction, there are definitely things I would do differently. To start with, I wouldn't waste time and money with PMBR (see discussion above). Also, I'm going to keep my barbri books and forgo getting my materials deposit back because I want to keep my lecture handouts that are all filled in with my notes. I'm doing this even if I pass because if I end up taking another jurisdiction I think I'm going to try and prepare for that just with books and self-study materials instead of sitting through another 2 months of lectures, it will be easier to do that if I have my notes from this go around. And in the event I don't pass I'm not going to take barbri again. There is no reason to sit through the lectures again. If I didn't pass it's because my preparation wasn't adequate, so that means on the next go around I'm going to have to spend lots of time memorizing and doing practice problems until my head is ready to explode.

Also, as much as I adore my friends, and love Ms. Fabulous in particular, if I do this again I'm going to have to be very careful about studying with people. I realized too late into the game this go around that the studying with Ms. Fabulous was hurting more than it was helping. My main problem tends to be that I really can't get anything done if I'm by myself. I like background noise and activity going on around me. Even if I have music or TV on, if I'm totally by myself for too long I go nuts. But I'll have to figure out some other method if there is a next time because although I'm solely responsible for my procrastination and preparation, Ms. Fabulous definitely distracted me and made it hard to focus on what I needed to get done. By the time the exam rolled around I was freaking out that I hadn't done enough and I was resentful that I had spent so much of the summer "studying" with Ms. Fabulous because it felt like all of that time had gone to total waste.

So there you have it, my long rambling, semi-coherent thoughts about the bar exam. Better late than never right? A lot of people have said that waiting for the results is almost worse than studying. So far I haven't found it to be too bad yet. I like the approach that Ana wrote about over on her blog: assume that you passed until you're told otherwise. There are days where I definitely feel like I failed, but for the most part I'm just trying to keep busy and not worry about it. I'm sure I will feel different and lose a lot of sleep when the week of results rolls around. But until then, I'm enjoying having my normal life back. Life really is brighter on the other side of the bar exam :)

Full post as published by [ Useless Dicta ] on August 14, 2009 (boomark / email).