The Day After the Bar Exam
Yesterday I sat for the Georgia Bar Examination and it was a demoralizing experience. The format for the essay questions were not similar to the prior questions released by the Board of Bar Examiners and that threw me off. At times I was even struggling to determine what area of the law the questions were focused on as a result of the fact patterns not being straight forward. I also feel like I panicked on a few questions and did not work IRAC into my answers. Needless to say, I do not think I did too well on the Georgia Essay portion of the exam.
The two Multistate Performance Test questions were fair and I think that I was able to answer them reasonably well. I was very pleased with the first one but my organization suffered a little on the second. I hope that my performance on those two will save my butt.
When I left the examination I was less than confident that I passed. I met up for dinner with a friend from Thomasville which made me feel even worse as she thought the last two questions were easy and that she had answered them correctly. I felt very dumb sitting there eating my chicken sandwich and finished up as quickly as possible so I could head for home.
The ride back home gave me four hours to rethink the exam over and over again. I went from feeling like things would be alright on minute to feeling like a complete failure the next. Becky said she was proud of me for trying, and everyone at church had me in their prayers. Pastor Greg called me to see how I felt about the exam too. I hope that when the results come out on October 26th that I pass. If I fail, I will feel like I let everyone down.
This morning getting ready for work Becky tried to cheer me up. She gave me a hug and I started to cry. I think it was because I am both physically and mentally exhausted. She loves me. After that as I put my shoes on both Jackson and Molly hopped up in my lap to take a nap, dogs are wonderful. I have a very blessed life. I know that as a Christian I should trust the outcome of yesterday’s exam to Jesus, but sometimes that is a hard thing to do.
Dont worry too much. The bar exam was a little twisted, and you should take comfort in the fact that you werent the only one feeling uneasy about your performance on the test. The test was not “fair” in that it did not test competency, but rather tried to test in the areas of the law that were not extensively covered in the bar study materials. I just pray that we both passed. Good luck.
My husband and I will be taking bar number 2 this summer in GA. Do you have any advice on passing the GA bar?
Thanks.
@ Renee: My advice on passing the bar is to take a bar prep course and stick to it for the 6-8 weeks it takes to complete it. I went home every night after work and studied for 3-4 hours. It was not fun, but it paid off in the end!
Renee,
Don’t know if you check back here often, but I have also passed Florida and Georgia bars, as well as Louisiana, and to be honest with you, if you are taking Georgia as the second state, you only need to take the one day attorney’s exam. So with that in mind, I would focus on the past exams that they publish on the website and see if you can get the Bar-Bri materials from e-bay or something like that. I took a week off of work and studied for about 6-8 hours a day for that week, and my associate who also passed took 2 weeks off but had surgery and was out for four days. We just studied the old exams (all essay questions) and were prepared to answer from those.
Good luck.