I'm studying for the AZ bar and freaking out!! Please help??

Question

I failed it last Feb, by 8 points! So I got a tutor ($100/hr), took off work for the last 3 weeks, and been studying everyday. Now I feel like I know nothing and will fail. Please help me - am I doomed? Study tips? Advice? ANYTHING!!

Answer 1

I'm taking California next week, so I can sympathize.

Two things to remember. First, every single person taking the bar freaks out for some period of time just before the bar. Every one of us. It may be for minutes or days, but it'll happen. So, know that you're not alone, and just take a deep breath and keep working through it.

Second, you'll never ever ever learn every bit of law. None of us will. There will always be areas and rules that we don't know, or don't know as well as we'd like. Accept that as a given. The best you can do is the best you can do. And none of us can do everything.

That being said, there are ways to improve what your best is. Find your strengths and play to those. If you're good at memorizing, find short lists of rules that you can memorize. If you're good at understanding the big picture, or with visual memory, organize your notes and outlines in ways that help you understand or visualize them. Every person learns and memorizes differently, so play to your strengths.

As for study tips, learn the structure of the law. How it all fits together. Once you understand the structure, you can learn it in manageable chunks, rather than as one huge morass of rules.

Feel free to write me offline if you want, and I'll bounce some more ideas for you. Me, Yahoo Answers is one of the ways that I'm prepping. It reminds me to be responsive to the question, to state my arguments clearly, and to summarize my conclusions.

Everyone learns differently. Everyone gets stressed. Nobody is doomed. Take a deep breath, and do your best. And keep finding ways to improve your best, based on what you're already good at.

Good luck. To us all.