aiming for 75%

it's amazing how perspective affects things. in undergrad, i was used to getting 95% & above on tests. that's what you had to get to get an A. that's how little material they were trying to get us to memorize at once. that's how easy it was.

not so with law. my first semester i got around 58% on my criminal law test, and i got an A, got the highest grade in the class, and got an award for it. totally different perspective. you've got to totally change the way you think to take a test & walk out of the room feeling good about what you've done.

so i just took my second practice multistate bar exam. there are 200 questions on the multistate. to "multistate out" in my state, you have to get a 150 scaled score. today i got a 147 raw, 159 scaled. they wouldn't even grade my essays if this were the real test--as long as i made a good faith effort, i would have passed the test.

but i got 53 questions wrong. 53. that's insane. i did terrible; i don't know enough. i've been trying really hard not to be perfectionistic about this test--to major on the major things, and leave the details for other people. you can't know everything--it's really impossible. in practice you have to look everything up anyway. so you've got to concentrate on the stuff they test on most often. but man, how do you leave a test missing 53 questions & feel good about it?

the funniest thing to me is that i do the worst in contracts. i spent 3 semesters as a TA for a contracts professor. mind you, the second semester of contracts is much more complex, and i never took sales, both of which are tested heavily in the contracts section. but i wonder how bad i'd be doing if i hadn't TA'd. more ironic still is that i consistently score the highest in evidence--the only subject i ever got a B in--the class that ruined my perfect gpa.

so yeah. fun stuff. my life is this test right now. wish there was something more exciting to share. only 4.5 more weeks, and then it's all over.

oh, and i've gone through 3 more pens since i last wrote...