Help, I am freaking out about the bar exam!

Everyone I know who has taken a bar exam has had at least one freakout.

At least one.

Most people have more than one.

But you have to just work through it and move on.

I had two freakouts (that I remember, anyway) the first time I took a bar exam.

The first one came just a few days after I started studying for the Oregon bar exam. I was taking an MBE prep course, and we were taking practice tests on the various MBE subjects. I was scoring in the 20-40% range.

I was super-depressed. I had done very well in law school, and what did it matter? I was bombing these questions. I felt like a loser and knew I would fail.

To make matters worse, a couple days later, I got a nasty stomach virus and was out of commission for nearly THREE solid days. No studying at all.

Now, any fool would agree with me that I was going to fail the bar exam.

Well, a few days later, I had recovered my strength and was able to get back in to studying. The freakout passed, and I slowly built my confidence as I learned more each day.

I had another freakout about three weeks before the exam.

I felt like I had learned a lot, and was capable of passing the exam, but I started thinking about how horrible it would be to fail.

I got on a mental loop about failure and couldn’t stop thinking about it no matter how hard I tried. I decided just to take a couple of days off from the bar exam and enjoy life. So, that Saturday and Sunday I went on a hike with my family and just hung out and did whatever I wanted.

The break did me good, and I started the next Monday fresh.

So, don’t worry about having a freakout; it is normal.

Just make sure that you get past it somehow. If the feeling doesn’t go away after a couple of days, make sure you talk to someone you trust about how you are feeling.

That person can probably give you some much-needed perspective to help you get back on track.

Stay strong.