Thursday, May 30, 2013

The Bar Exam. Or, How I'm Spending My Summer.

Hi all!

It's been a busy two weeks. To recap: FitBlog, then the next day I went to Cuba for a school trip. I got back, celebrated Sourabh's birthday, then my parents arrived for my law school graduation. Which took place in the pouring rain with thunder and lightning also making an appearance. My parents and I then headed up to Montreal and Quebec City for a five day road trip.

I forgot to include this photo in my post about Quebec!
They have tiny buses!! Look at this tiny adorable bus!

It's been wonderful, but I'm really looking forward to settling back into routine over the next few months. It's hard to eat healthy and get in the kind of exercise I like to do when traveling, and while I try to always walk a lot and eat a healthy breakfast and lunch, I also don't want to miss out on experiences like trying an authentic Cuban dish or eating in a wonderful French bistro. And that's a good thing, I think!

But now we're back to routine, which is also good. I have a special routine this summer. What does that routine look like?

Bar review books. Foam roller included for scale.
This. It looks like this.

I've mentioned bar review and the bar exam, but not said much about it. Basically, I will be either watching lectures or reading about topics and completing practice questions, all summer long.

For the course I'm taking, I can either watch a taped lecture in a lecture hall with classmates or in my apartment, so I have the feeling I'll mostly be watching at home.

My screen view today.

Each lecture is about 4 hours long, but some are a bit more and others are a bit less. You have a book of handouts which you fill out as you follow along with the lecture (except for this week, where we don't have handouts and just have to take notes). There are also books with more information that you need to study and learn.

The bar exam is a two day exam, 6 hours each day. It's offered twice a year, in February and the end of July, and I'm taking it in July. It has multiple choice parts and essay parts. It is closed-book, meaning I have to have everything in those books up there memorized. Basically.

After yesterday's first lecture, I had 9 pages of notes total. There are about 30 lectures. Eeeeek. Yes, I'm getting kind of nervous.

I'm going to start increasing my mileage in anticipation of marathon training, so it'll be nice to have therapy runs to turn to whenever I get stressed. I have the feeling there will be a lot of those! And yes, there will also be more healthy eating and exercise posts again :)


Have you ever taken a giant exam? Do you like getting back to routine after being away from it for a while?

13 comments:

  1. I love the foam roller included for scaling purposes--that is a serious pile of books! Probably the biggest exam I've taken was the SAT back in the dark ages. I signed up for a prep course, did some practice tests on my own, the whole nine yards. I'm not a test-taker, though, so it was really tough.

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    1. While I used to be quite the test-taker, I haven't taken exams since last November when I took the MPRE (an ethics exam) and had the hardest time buckling down and studying. Still, I think it'll be ok, since I passed that one and am going to prep a LOT more for this exam!

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  2. You can do it girl! I have faith in you. I also think early morning waffles one day will help :p

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  3. Omg! That foam roller photo is hilarious! And terrifying.

    I can totally relate to the idea of therapy runs too. I trained for a 50k while studying for the LSAT, and it worked well for me. :)

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    1. I'm hoping it'll work well for the Bar! It's a lot more knowledge retention but maybe I can review things in my head while I run?

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  4. Ouch that is a stack of books. I have a lot of friends who went through law school you'll get through it! Good luck.

    And running always clears my head maybe we can get some marathon training runs in together and sync up our schedules this summer!

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    1. Thanks, Gianna! I would LOVE to do that!!

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  5. You can do it! You're going to be a great lawyer!

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  6. You are amazing. I have no doubt that you will rock the bar. And then you can foam roll so you don't get tight ;) xox

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  7. If I can do it, you can do it! You really can only retain 2 weeks worth of information. (Or that is what they told us in the beginning of Barbri) So consider this time prep/training for that! Good luck!

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