Make This Your Last Time | Page 7 of 34

November 14, 2023December 7, 2023 - 5 Comments

Minimum Competence Does Not Mean Bare Minimum

How would you narrate your hopes, desires, and dreams to pass the bar exam?

I want to improve.

I want to start my career and live my life without this hanging over my head.

I feel that painful yearning inside. I’m not content with this! I’m upset. I’m frustrated! I’m tired of being frustrated!

I want to pass the bar exam. I want to be special.

I’ll find my way forward, whatever that means. I don’t know where to go, but I’ll start, wherever that leads me.

But anyone can say that they want to pass.

How do you do this efficiently and effectively?

Are you confusing busy work with actual learning?

How to get and STAY motivated in your journey?

What do you do when you see fluctuations and plateaus?

September 4, 2023October 24, 2023 - 4 Comments

What If You Failed the Bar Exam? Should You Retake a Bar Review Course?

So you find yourself in an unbelievable situation: You failed the bar exam.

Procedure in case you failed the bar exam

Reality is undeniable. You dust off your tears. It’s time to take action.

You wonder: What’s the next step?

Should you retake your bar prep course? What’s the alternative?

August 19, 2023April 19, 2024 - No Comments

When Do Bar Exam Results Come Out in Each State?

The anxious wait for bar exam results can be challenging in different ways.

“Did you get your bar results yet? How do you think you did? I’m sure you passed! You’re so smart! You got this!!!”

Bro, can you just let me agonize in peace?

Not only do you have to fend off people asking the same question you’re wondering, the tension between you and your outlines gets stronger each day because you just want to do another question. We get attached to the struggle.

Preparing for the bar exam can be a stressful and intense process, and waiting for the results can be equally nerve-wracking…if not more.

As you wait for the big news every day, you become full of uncertainty, regrets, and thoughts and prayers to yourself.

But when you’re anticipating something, it helps to ease your uncertainty by knowing when your bar exam results come out. Here’s a list of when you could expect your results:

July 8, 2023July 8, 2023 - 6 Comments

Stop “Studying” and Start Learning: The Underrated Practice of Practice in Bar Prep

You sit still during lectures and try to stay awake. You take notes. You read outlines. You even answer practice questions.

Then nothing works. Has this happened to you?

Back in college, I gave a copy of my cheat sheet for our engineering midterm to a girl. How do you say no to a girl? Answer: You can’t.

And then she got the lowest score in the class.

It had all the equations needed, but she didn’t know how and when those equations applied. She hadn’t seen those rules applied to similar problems. She assumed that just having the rules there would be enough. (Same reason open-book bar exams would change very little.)

It’s like when someone says, “b urself” or “learn to love yourself.” Okay… what’s that mean? Could you explain that a bit more, bro? Any specifics?

Same with your “black letter law”… What does “related” mean in your rule statement? You get a better sense of what that means by looking at examples of how that rule is used until you gain an intuition.

You’d think these rules would be plug and play, but they’re not always. Context matters. Knowing when and how to use them matters.

BTW, she was my gf at the time. Awkward! Oh well, live and learn.

And that’s what I want to talk about—learning.

July 1, 2023July 3, 2023 - 3 Comments

Common Traits of Bar Passers & Why Mental Fortitude Is Important for Bar Preparation

They say knowledge is power (and you can never have too much power).

But why is it that with all the information out there, we don’t always get to where we want to go? Why do 80 percent of New Year resolutions fail by February? (Remember those? LOL)

“If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”

Knowledge applied correctly is power. Knowledge is potential energy. It’s what we DO with the knowledge and the desire, not the fact that we have them, not the fact that we simply declare our desire.

But even then, the top hurdle that I’ve encountered with people taking the bar isn’t skills or knowledge.

It’s, uh, mindset. I lowkey hesitate to use this term because it’s sometimes associated with impractical woo-woo and things like visualization.

But the point remains: The hurdle is often internal.

If you have the raw material but can’t bring yourself to make a sand castle, if you can’t turn that potential energy in your mind into kinetic energy, what’s the point?

"half of bar prep involves preparing oneself mentally"

"the bar exam is all about your mental fitness and your ability to retain a crap ton of information without going crazy. Take care of yourself this time around."

It’s getting harder to pass the bar exam…and that’s exactly why you should go for it.

It’s not going to get easier. But when the bar is set high, it’s actually an opportunity to stand out more.

How?

If you take the time to observe people who have passed the bar exam, you can kind of tell why. There’s something about their behavior: