I am feeling more sane today

I'm in a generally better state of mind today, and I forced myself to get up at a reasonable hour and start studying. Which is excellent. I have to keep reminding myself to take it one day at a time, and focus on the simple goals: get up, get at least half the studying done before work, do some practice, do some substantive. Set daily and hourly goals and stick to them, that is the key to success.

Also I scored 19/34 (55%) on practice MBEs today, which makes me feel better. Quite possibly yesterday was a fluke. Although according to my performance, I need to go back and study contracts harder. I gave myself 4 days for professional responsibility, but I really don't need that long, I got through the material very fast. So now I have extra time for practice.

Once again, with feeling

I was going to post this on my private journal, but really- what's the point of having a bar exam blog if I'm going to sanitize it for fear some mythical audience that isn't even paying attention anyway is going to think less of me?

So. The bar exam is only about 4 weeks away now, and my study habits keep getting more and more lax. I can't focus on my work for more than 20 minutes at a time, I can't motivate myself to do practice questions, and I keep looking at my stuff and thinking, "It's no use, I'm never going to remember any of this." I'm desperately frustrated and scared and at the moment, depressed.

The whole bar exam is just ludicrously stupid to begin with. I'm on the hook for more than $60k worth of loans, I spent 3 years taking classes and writing and researching and yes, dammit, even practicing a bit. Am I going to come out of the chute as a fantastic lawyer? Of course not, no one does. But I fail to see how the experience of freaking out about the bar exam for 12 weeks is going to make me a better lawyer, or how an arbitrary test is going to accurately measure my capacity to practice. I can see a little bit of wisdom in the essay portion, although I still question the value of timed essay-writing as a measurement of legal skill. At least you're sort of measuring something: presumably the test-taker's ability to read a fact pattern and quickly pick out the legal issues and have some kind of clue what to do. (Also the ability to write, which is a skill that should be tested, IMO.)

Still in all, it's a relatively silly exercise, considering that the primary basis for our future legal opinions is going to be research into the law, not some vague principles we kind of remember from law school. If there is one thing I've learned from law school, it is that if you don't check the law, physically go and look at it, you are a moron.

And then there's the MBE. Yes, I'm sure the ability to read a half page of text and snap off an opinion on an obscure aspect of common law will be tremendously useful in my future career. I imagine that clients walk into your office, slam down a multiple choice question, and shriek, "Quick! You only have 1.8 minutes to render a legal opinion on this!" on a daily basis. My favorite questions are the ones where the answer makes no sense whatsoever- ie, you actually have to have insufficient knowledge to pick the answer they deem is "right." (I know you bar-takers know what I mean.) My second favorite type is where the subject of the question is some obscure branch of law that no one gives a damn about anyway, and if they did they would look it up.

Because even though the test is all about rote memorization of factoids, you can't just, you know, ask a question. That would make too much sense. You have to make it a goddamn logic puzzle, the goal if which is not to test your ability to select the right answer but trick you into selecting the wrong answer. The MBE is less important than the essay, but unless you're an essay god (and I don't have that much self-confidence) you need to get a decent score on the multiple choice, and when I get freaking six out of seventeen right I start to get a little agitated. Die MBE, die.

Anyway. I can't be the only person feeling this insane right now, can I? I hope not. I know I need to shake it off and keep studying and doing questions, but we come back to the same problem of difficulty concentrating. Vicious, evil circle. Can I just wake up in January and have this all be over with?

ARGH (The frustration is palpable)

I scored 6/17 on mixed subject practice MBE questions today. Were the questions exceptionally hard, or am I exceptionally stupid, or have I forgotten whatever I managed to learn over the past 5 weeks? I am unbelievably frustrated and disheartened, and it's getting harder every day to force myself to sit down, focus, and study. It seems odd that it's harder as I get closer to the exam and more worried about it...but this kind of intensive study is extremely unnatural to me and I'm losing my grip.

I've also had "Hips Don't Lie" stuck in my head for approximately 17 million consecutive hours, which really is not helping in the slightest.

I value succinctness

Speaking to a non-law student friend a few minutes ago, I summarized the MRPC in this way: "Basically it boils down to 'don't be a jackass,' but because we're lawyers we need more specifics."

I think that's as adequate a summary as any.

Also, I just finished listening to John Grisham's "King of Torts" on tape, and my prevailing thought is that 2L evidence students could be made to read it and decide exactly how many ethics rules the protagonist violated. If I wasn't so busy, I might do it just for fun.

Ugh

I've moved on from the sunny pastures of criminal procedure and now I'm in evidence. I've had a good grounding in it, but it's still tedious as anything. I should do a couple essays today along with the MBEs...It stuns me how close I am getting to the exam, and now that I've found a job I have more time to spend fretting about the exam. I don't expect the real freakout to occur until a coupla weeks beforehand, however.

Linkity

Found this amusing post about bar prep by Jeremey Blachman. Check out his old blog, which is extremely entertaining. His new blog is here.

Now back to criminal procedure...

Checking in

I haven't been posting here as much as I thought I would. Really, it seems like the struggle to study is just the same complaints over and over again: I'm tired from working, stressed from searching for a job, the material is copious and sometimes hard to get through, the temptation to avoid studying and in particular to avoid essay questions is hard to overcome...etc. etc.

I finished property this past week, and started on criminal law. Property was, if you'll pardon the expression, a bitch and a half. I think I'll probably have to revisit it...I didn't do as much practice as I intended, and I just felt so overwhelmed by the material that it made it even harder to focus. Criminal is much simpler and I remember more of it, so it's somewhat easier. I've done some MBE today; the plan is that later on I'll review my outline again and do a bunch of essays. Then I'll start on criminal procedure, either this evening or tomorrow. (More likely tomorrow.)

I seem to be consistently scoring 9-11 out of 17 on the MBE practice questions, which is around 50-65%. So I'm satisfied with that. It's harder to quantify my performance on the essays though. Not to mention the fact that it's soooo tempting to just...not do essays. Which is a bad, bad idea considering how important essay performance is to my overall score on the bar. I need to practice and I can't leave it all for the couple weeks leading up to the bar.

The main problem with this independent-study thing is that, while it's fairly easy to stay motivated and on task for the first couple weeks, it's a long-haul project and it's hard to stay motivated on an endurance studying campaign. Even when you religiously stick to your study plan, your immediate reward is: you get to do it again the next day. Only the thought of the bar looming closer by the day provides me with any focus at all.

Now I'm starting to wonder when I'm going to get my seat assignment. I got my petition in on time, they confirmed receipt over the phone, and they cashed my check. So...I wait. Story of my life this summer. ;)

Covenants? Title? Bzuh?

I've take to skimping a bit on my evening studying this past week, and while I feel guilty and have resolved to do better, I frankly blame real property. I don't recall learning half of this stuff; whether that's because it was poorly taught or because I stopped paying attention at some point during the semester I could not tell you. But in any case, it's 110 pages worth of outline in this book that I'm plowing through, which should give you some idea of why I feel so daunted. Just the scope of what I need to know, the range of different topics included under the "real property" headed, and the incomprehensible weirdness of so much of it make it hell to try to retain.

After a certain amount of study it stops making any sense at all; I've found that I need breaks that are rather longer than I've taken with torts or property, just to be able to get through it. I had myself scheduled to focus on property through Tuesday (originally it was Sunday, but I had some breathing room so I bumped it back to give contracts and property an extra day apiece), but I may give it till Wednesday, depending on how things go. Today was supposed to be a review day, but all I did this week was property anyway and I'm trying to finish going through this outline bit by bit- studying the outline and making my own notes/outline helps me fix the material in my mind. Then I review my own (much-shortened) outline.

I need to pick up the pace on the MBE and essay practice too...it's easy to slack on the essay practice and I absolutely cannot do that. For the rest of my property review, I plan to focus heavily on practice and see what I am actually retaining and what I'm not.

It's just devlish hard not to panic over property, is all. I'll feel infinitely better once I move on to crim, which is something I am at least interested in and feel that I understand.