Tuesday
7am- Shower, eat breakfast, and head down to the testing facility. Luckily, I am staying at the hotel where the exam is being held so I don't have to worry about driving directions. I highly recommend it.
8:15am- Stand in line to check in. For my state we only need one form of ID.
8:30am- Go to the bathroom for what seems like the 10th time already today (when I get nervous I have to pee- a lot).
8:35am- Spend over 30 minutes waiting for stragglers to come into the bar exam. This part is very annoying. The examiners told us to be checked in by 8:15am. It is the BAR EXAM. How could you possibly be late for this??
9:15am- Listen to test instructions. *snooze*
9:30am- Finally start the first MPT (Multistate Performance Test). It is a "nice" way to start the bar exam (are there really ANY nice ways?) because you don't need to know any outside law for the MPT. They are simply testing you on your ability read the cases and information that they give you and organize a coherent brief, memo, jury instruction, or whatever else they decide for you to write.
11:00am- The First MPT is done and we get a 10 minute break. My hand seriously hurts from writing so much, but I think that I did pretty well with my organization and analysis of the problem.
11:10am- Start on the second MPT of the day. We are done 90 minutes later. My hand hurts even more. This MPT was a little harder and halfway through I thought of a better way to organize it, but when you are handwriting, you simply don't have time to go back and re-do things.
11:45am- I start to get distracted by a proctor that has fallen asleep on a chair behind his "area." There is one girl that is raising her hand that wants extra blue books and he has fallen asleep. Why won't he wake up so that she can put her hand down!!!!! I can't say anything, but I am fully distracted. Maybe that is why I would have liked five more minutes at the end in order to finish the question. Jack*ss.
12:40pm- We break for lunch. Although there was no time to eat during the MPTs we are all starving. We get an hour for lunch. During that time I go upstairs to my room, eat a sandwich, drink a soda, and go over my essay topic notecards.
2pm- After some more instructions, we start in on the essay portion. We have six essays, with three hours to complete all of them. Although Barbri told us not to, I glanced through the questions and wrote the essays out of order. We had a separate blue book for each essay anyway, and I wanted to be able to spend more time on topics that I knew more about. We ended up with the following topics: Secured Transactions, Family Law, Partnership, Torts/ Constitutional Law, Property, and Contracts. The first three I was estactic to see, but none of us were expecting three MBE topics on the essay day. I didn't go over the MBE topics the night before so I was really nervous about those essays. My rule statements were not as strong as I would have liked them to be, but I at least finished all of the essays.
5pm- The essays are over. I think that I did okay (?).
6pm- I decide to go home to have dinner with my boyfriend and his mom. I knew that I was going to get questions like "so, how did it go?" that I really didn't feel like answering, but also didn't want to be sad and order pizza to my hotel room. After an hour dinner, I left to head back to the hotel.
7:30pm- Calls from my friends taking bars out of state start to come in. We had some of the same essays and although they tell you not to discuss the exam, we of course do just that. We all agree that we are having trouble finding motivation to go over MBE topics tonight to prepare for the next day.
9:30pm- I finally stop accepting phone calls and start to look at my notecards, along with doing a few practice questions. I'm trying to figure out the best way to study the night before and it is simply not working.
11:40pm- I finally shut off the lights and try to get to sleep. I then spend the next two hours or so tossing and turning, trying to fall asleep. Very frustrating.
Wednesday
7am- Shower, eat breakfast, and head down to the testing facility.
8:00am- Stand in line to check in. Other people had a lot of trouble sleeping last night so I am glad that I am not the only one.
8:30am- Listen to instructions and start to fill out all of the bubbles on the scantron sheet. I feel like I am 12 again.
9:00am- We start the MBE. The MBE is a 200 question multiple choice portion of the bar exam. Multiple choice SOUNDS easy, but this is where most people fail the exam. We have three hours to complete 100 questions on the following six subjects: Torts, Contracts, Property, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law/ Criminal Procedure, and Evidence.
9:30am- I start to worry as I usually finish the MBE early, but the first 17 questions are freakin' hard and I am on schedule to finish right on time! I swear the rest of the questions were ones that I have never seen before and truly had no idea what the answer was. At one point I was thinking in my head, "I hope that I am guessing correctly." Seriously.
12:00pm- Lunch break. I quickly talk to some of the other takers. Some people didn't finish (I ended up speeding up and finishing with about 10 minutes to spare). Everyone is stunned and also pissed at PMBR and Barbri because we all feel like we weren't taught some of these concepts. I go over a few notecards, but once I start to see a few mistakes, I decide to put them away.
1:00pm- We sit through more instructions and have to fill out all of the bubble information again.
1:30pm- We start the second half of the MBE. I am a little less stressed this half because there are fact patterns and questions that are familiar to me. Thank god. I finish with 10 minutes to spare again.
4:30pm- It takes about 20 minutes for the proctors to pick up our scantron sheets, make sure no one stole the test, etc.
5pm- I have a mojito in hand at a bar and drink it in less than five minutes. I haven't been drunk all summer long and I am determined to make up for that. I meet two guys that I took Barbri and the bar with, and for the first hour or so, we are not really celebrating. We are thinking that we just got our proverbial nuts kicked in and hope that we don't have to do it again in February (the bar exam is only administered two times a year- in July & in February). As the drinks start flowing and the texts/ phone calls come in from friends taking other bars, we start to realize that we DON'T have to study tomorrow and that there is nothing we can do about the bar exam anymore. More bar takers start to come into the bar and we all congregate, but after a while, stop talking about the bar.
7:30pm- BF shows up and I am already fairly loopy. We stay for another three hours, and then leave because he is my ride home and has to get up early for work. I say goodbye to my fellow bar takers who I probably will never see again as I didn't go to law school with them and tomorrow I move from the state.
HERE'S HOPING I NEVER HAVE TO GO THROUGH THESE TWO DAYS EVER AGAIN!!!!
6 comments:
Wow, I want to cry a little bit. But I totally know what you mean about the multiple choice - I had an exam over the weekend that I thought I kicked ass on (which, I guess I did - I only got two wrong - but I came out of it thinking I got zero wrong), but the multiple choices are just super tricky. That's how they get you! Bastards. Here's hoping you never have to take it again, and that you could maybe hold my hand when I have to take it.
I have a good friend who also took the bar in July. Two days of insanity! And this friend? Decided to move his wedding date from February 2009 to March 2009, just in case he has to retake the exam. Insane. Here's hoping you have positive news come October (that's when results come out, right?!)
My state releases the results in late Sept, but I have some friends that won't hear until late October so I am pretty lucky.
Grrrrr.... sounds totally awful. But good luck, I hope you pass, and I have my fingers crossed for you.
btw, thanks for stopping by and for the comment. I love it when people delurk.
Just READING this is stressful. My fingers are crossed that you passed!
I'm sure you did a fantastic job! Good thinking with staying at the hotel so you don't have to drive! :)
And I hate when people are late getting to any kind of standardized testing situation. I always get even more nervous waiting for those bastards to arrive!
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