Handwriting the exam sucked, but I did it. On my mom’s advice, I bought pens of various widths, which were supposed to keep my hand from cramping, but I’m not convinced that it was the pens as much as it was stress that kept my hand from freezing up. I limited myself to an hour on each of the essays. I spent about 15 mins reading and outlining the essay, and 45 mins writing. On the PT, I spent about an hour reading/outlining, and then 2 hrs writing. That seemed to work pretty well. I was able to get most of my points down, although there was A LOT of crossing out and little notations off to the side. I tried my best to keep my handwriting legible. If, for some reason, you have to write the entire Bar like me, when you spend a good majority of the summer anticipating TYPING it, remind yourself of the little blessings like - 1) you won’t be the candidate whose computer fails them in the middle of the PT and has to pick up where you left off handwriting the rest of the test, dealing with the mental distress of - was the rest of your answer saved??!?!?!? 2) if you fail, at least you can blame it *partially* on the fact that you had to handwrite at the last minute and didn’t have the time you really needed to write all that you wanted; 3) when you finish the test, you finish the test. There is no need to worry about uploading, downloading, internet connections, etc. You hand your booklet to the proctor and you are free to leave. It’s over.
But - my advice: If you possibly possibly can, try to get transferred to a writing center. It is really discouraging as a handwriter to look up and see everyone else outlining on their computers, while you are trying to get your info together so that your essay isn’t a total disaster. Also, there’s less people to deal with. I think we had at least a couple hundred in our warehouse. Chances are, if you’re handwriting, you get to stay at some swanky hotel and handwrite in a nice little conference room with a handful of other people. Fewer people = fewer distractions = better performance.
I hope that at least some of the people in my room felt a little sorry for me, having to watch me handwrite and stretch out my poor fingers when it was all over. One girl made the comment that maybe handwriters have better answers because we don’t have time to discuss totally irrelevant stuff and have to actually limit ourselves to what the question asks. Maybe. I just hope that the examiners go through thousands and thousands of typed answers, just to come across that one handwritten answer that eeks out all the sympathy possible… Handwriting sucks because it’s slow and you don’t do it on a regular basis, but you can still do it and finish on time and make all the necessary points. After seeing some of the craziness some other people went through with their computers, part of me thinks I might handwrite again if I have to do this a second time…….
3 comments:
I used erasable pens, but they got sketchy at parts. How many pages were you averaging?
hmm... i thought about that, but i've never had very good luck with erasing. I think on the essays I did maybe 4pgs front & back?? And the PT's were much longer. Honestly, though, I was too busy writing to know how many pages I was taking up. I had tons of scribbles and cross-outs and even a few arrows. You??
Travis Wise wrote, "[i]f you are writing the exam (as opposed to typing), consider using an erasable black pen. They haven't been in fashion for years, but you may find them very useful on the bar exam since crossing words out is extremely discouraged. As long as the pen is black, you can use it." The erasable pens I bought were softer than the typical ones and it did not erase all the way. So, it left that washed-out effect on the paper when I made the 50-something corrections. I like the blog. Good luck!
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