Had I a choice to do things over again, I would have been (and still may become) a thespian. I have developed a tremendous love for most things artistic. I play the guitar, dabble (very rarely) in the piano, and sing. I used to write poetry (and plan to get back into that someday). I enjoy going to art museums although I am not well versed in works of art or their creators per se. I enjoy watching live performances of all kinds from theater to music to comedy, etc. . .
I have been trying to clear my mind of the disappointments which have led to my current situatioin. I am becoming a "masterful test taker." In reality, I am doing my best to method act. In fact, "I am a master test taker." I have been envisioning myself as a successful test taker, imagining the feelings that accompany the success I am striving for.
This means I must change. I have to change my posture, my thought process (most especially), my feelings about exams (and this one in particular). I have to work on my exam strategy and my time management for each problem. I am attempting to create a literal vision and expectancy. When I say literal, I mean I oft close my eyes and see myself as a licensed working attorney.
It is one thing to fail, but it is entirely a different thing to be a self defeatest. If you do not believe in yourself, you will rarely (if ever) succeed. "He who says he can and he who says he cannot are both usually right." -Confucius- Life will supply all the haters, detractors, pessimists, and salt shakers you can deal with for any given endeavor. Why add yourself to the mix? In fact if your family and freinds fall into these categories then you may want to create as much distance as you can manage (emotionally and/or spatially if necessary).
I have never been a good test taker in the past, nor have I ever been particularly organized. I have never properly learned test taking strategies (save for my LSAT course during which I did not adequately apply myself. The transformation I seek is not easy, but it is necessary. I am attempting to transform myself like a chameleon for purposes of this exam. I tried schedules in the past. For instance, I made myself a study schedule first year. However, the schedule set a limit to the amount of time I was going to study. In contrast, I got sucked into studying until all hours of the morning and I ignored the schedule. This time will have to be different. This will be a little more goal oriented.
Anyway, here is what I have been doing for the past couple of days. I just compiled a study guide. While I am eager to study, I knew if I didn't have an exact study plan, I would FAIL AGAIN. So I took tones of time to make one. I still have some things to modify, but it is near 85% completion. Here is what I did:
First, I installed a countdown timer as per a blog post by "Frustrated Bar Examinee" in order to countdown the days to the exam. Next, I compiled a daily study schedule. I included order of topics and the number of problems and review I intend to do for each day. I also include slots to record the accomplishments for that day as well as a slot to keep track of percentages and difficulty level of the problems. Furthermore, I did a stastical breakdown of the frequency and format of topics on the State portion of the exam. In my Bar/bri materials from Winter '10 (which really was just the stuff from the previous Spring because they did not change them) They listed the topics from Winter '99 until Spring of '09. I added the latest two administrations and went further. I broke down the topic frequency by percentage, and I ranked topics from highest to lowest % of appearances amongst the essays given.
Furthermore, I analyzed the frequency of combinanation essays. I counted how many essays there were from July '03 to July '10 and noted what percentage of those were comination essay. Then, I analyzed the frequency of topics among the comination essays enumerating them from lowest to highest by percentage. This will help me to prioritize what I will need to study.
I will need to focus every fiber of my being into becoming this person I need to be. I know I am capable. I will need to bring myself to new heights. Since I will be typing I am thinking of attributing a few minutes a day towards typing faster and more accurately. I am not a slow typer, but the faster and more accurate I can become, the better off I will be on the essay portions of the exam. I also found an old handout from one of the deans of my old Law School. The workshop had to do with strategies on essays and multiple choice. I will read this probably once a day from here on out. I will absorb her strategies in order to meet this goal.
I beleive this can work if I do it right. I will become what i must in order to survive and overcome this ordeal.
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