Back On Track!

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Wednesday, May 23rd:

100 Torts MBE questions.
Time: 2 hrs, 45 minutes, including 'bubble' & 'go back to make sure I bubbled correctly' time. Yes, I'm still doing that after working all of the problems. I think doing one thing at a time works for me. Most bar-takers I know are following the 'solve question 1 - fill in answer to question 1 - solve Q2 - fill in answer to Q2' method for the MBE, no matter which format they preferred in law school. Is there some unwritten rule about this? As someone who has almost always been up against the clock, I understand the problem of running out of time with most or all of your scantron still blank, but isn't that easily resolved by stopping in enough time to fill it in, then going back question by question? I'm still willing to change, but only if there's a compelling reason to do so. Mentally moving back and forth between thinking and mechanically coloring in the answer on each question seems inefficient and distracting to me, but I'm open to suggestion.

Time was good - slightly better than the target 1.8 MPQ (minute per question) - however, this set of 100 were drawn from BarBri Drills (17), BarBri Easy Level (34) and PMBR's Blue Book (49). While encouraging, not a real indicator of how I will do on the harder levels or the real thing. I'm also still measuring my progress in 10-minute increments rather than the suggested 30 which may be an unnecessary waste of time. Both PMBR and MicroMash recommend doing 17 questions per half hour - which presumably includes filling in the bubbles and hopefully also leaving time to make sure you didn't skip one so that every answer thereafter is off. Measured in 30-minute increments, I managed to answer 16, 19, 24, 25, and 16, leaving 10 minutes to fill in the answers, 5 minutes to double check, and finished with a 15 minute cushion that I'm sure will erode quickly once I move to a higher level of difficulty - or another subject.

Accuracy improved as well - 70% correct, up from 44% on my first torts attempt. All on all, not a bad day. I think the improvement was also due to my extremely narrow study focus over the past couple of days. Trying to study on a 2000-mile road trip while packing, loading and driving a 17' U-Haul meant not accomplishing much. It seemed pointless to jump from subject to subject, or attempt questions without thorough prep or the ability to time them, so I've been pretty well indoctrinated with torts off and on for days. I liked the feeling of being well-prepared and improving my speed and accuracy, but I suspect that trying to cover all the remaining subjects that way will leave me scrambling for time in the end.

Now I'm curious about how everyone else is managing their time - but BarBri is calling, and surfing for bar blogs would not really be the way to spend the morning . . . would it?