Double Your Bar Essay Practice with Essay Cooking (Outlining)

No one starts out being perfect at a skill. For example, cooking involves a bunch of micro-skills you build up over time. Essay writing on the bar exam is a skill also.

It used to be that cooking wasn’t one of my strengths. If you asked me to cook for you, you were risking becoming a permanent resident of the toilet.

There are all these unfamiliar steps involved. Get the right amount of ingredients from outside my cave, handle each tool without creating a zone of danger, and follow an alchemical procedure to put together something that looks edible. I’m not sure if it’s the onions that made me want to cry. And then the worst part—clean it all up after.

Sounds kind of like preparing for essays on the bar exam!

In front of you, a blank canvas ready to be filled but only reflecting a harsh stillness. The cursor blinking at you, urging you for your next order.

It’s confusing, overwhelming, and frustrating in the beginning.

But like anything else, it just takes some buckling down and practice to get better.

And like anything else, there are ways to focus on the biggest levers to make this process more efficient and manageable (especially when you’re in a time crunch with the exam looming).

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5 Things I Did Differently the Second Time to Pass the Bar as a Repeater

The thing about reality is that your brain doesn’t notice it until it’s wrapped tightly around your brain like a sheet of aluminum foil, crinkling and making a polygonal mess.

0 minutes remaining. I slapped in my applicant ID, my entry ticket to three seconds of pristine agony. Then two, three more times. I made sure I was reading correctly. For once, I wasn’t delusional.

I could feel the heavy air of TRUTH closing in around me. Light fading quickly. But I wanted to believe. No, the silvery foil pushed its way around the noodles of my brain, turning into TV static. It was wrapped around the potato, and my brain realized it then.

In some other universe, I passed. But in this one, I failed. I failed. I failed.

2013 was the worst year of my life. My brain convinced me to break up with my friend of ten years and girlfriend of three. My dad screamed at our family on Christmas morning and night. I failed the July bar and haven’t since posted a status on Facebook out of supreme shame. 16 months and counting since becoming Facebook celibate. Facelibate.

I lied down on my bed. Then I got up.

The experiment was a failure. It was time to change the variables. This was how I would prove I was not insane. Then 2014 became the best year of my life.

Having experienced both outcomes of the California Bar Exam, I’ve distilled the following insights that were instrumental to passing the bar. These are things I did the second time but not the first time. Do you like clickbait? You won’t believe #4!

Any fool can learn from experience. I prefer to learn from other people’s experiences.

Make this the last time you have to walk the line between heaven and hell with these 5 things I did differently the second time to pass the bar exam.

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