Friday, January 25, 2013

Conditioning...It's a Marathon <---Sick of That Saying

Sleep. If my eyes aren't bleeding, I am not sleeping. This is a huge issue because I go to bed too late and wake up even later and then the day is lost. Here I am up at 2:12 a.m. despite my best intentions. I got home at 9 p.m. and promptly got in bed. One thing led to another and I was in the backyard at 10 p.m. reading a book. Then I was back in bed. Suddenly the urge to file my nails overwhelmed me, then my LinkedIn profile begged me to update it. Finally, I decided to look up some cases I had worked on to see if they were resolved.




The goal was to wake up at 6:00 a.m. and watch a Barbri Lecture on Essay Writing Approaches every day. It's the perfect a.m. study tool to get my juices flowing. Problem is...I'll still be up by 6:00 a.m. and ready to fall over into a coma for the next few days. I've tried Chamomile tea, I've tried sleeping pills, I've tried meditating, breathing deeply, singing the alphabet, melatonin, and drinking myself to sleep. Nothing works. The last resort is tough love. I guess its going to take an all nighter to get my ass in bed by 9:00 p.m. tomorrow. Hopefully it doesn't backfire on me and I end up in bed at noon then up all night for round two.




Stamina is probably the most underrated skill necessary for enduring the bar exam. The better your physical health-- the more likely you are to get through the exam in one piece. My friend told me today that she actually FELL ASLEEP on all three days of the July 2012 bar exam. She said the girl next to her kept coughing to wake her up. Exhaustion took over adrenalin and she failed. Falling asleep would never happen to me unless I was drugged but I can imagine giving up from exhaustion. I've done that many times. In law school there have been more than a few times where I was so tired that I literally just said fuck it and quit typing during an exam. That is not an option here. And law school exams are only 3 hours- the bar is 6 hours with a one hour lunch in between. That may not sound that bad but believe me after 2 months of intense studying...another 3 full days in a row of back to back testing is torture.

There are 31 days left until the bar exam. Here's the strategy:

1. Bed by 10- up by 6am every single mother-fucking-day
2. MBEs MBEs MBEs
3. Sort of, kind of, make a list of July's topics and sort of put them in a sort of lower priority
4. Memorize predicted topics
5. Practice more essays!!!!
6. Still gotta learn Barbri's Remedies, Community Property, Wills, PR, Corporations

That's all! Not unmanageable! Said, no bar exam taker ever.

Oh, by the way...someone said to me, 'I'm sending you white light." I don't know how she did that, or what it's for...but that day I did get a lot of much needed, warm, beautiful sunlight in my study room. This is no coincidence my friends. The lady sends light! I'll forward your requests. :)

Peace friends.

2 comments:

D said...

I have a rule I follow - I DO NOT touch my phone or laptop or tv or any electronic after 11:00 pm. I'm always asleep by midnight.

Also, ignore last July topics. They may show again, they may not, they serve no purpose. Focus on predicted topics, for sure, but last year subjects are as relevant (or not)as everything else not currently predicted. You have priority (predicted) and just everything else.

My 2 cents.

JD-Maybe said...

You have no rules! I went to bed at 3am and woke up at 8am so...since I absolutely MUST have 8 hours of sleep, I am hoping that the five I got will put me in a deep, deep, slumber by 9pm.

I will not ignore last July's...dont you listen to the predictor! He insists that you at least look at the exams. Wait you said 'topics' not 'exams.' Ok, topics on my ignore list but the exams I already did a run through.

He predicted 7 out of 13 topics. I'm no math major but isn't that too sketchy to trust. I dunno, he seems to be on the ball. My fear is I ignore evidence and then BOOM!