My Bar Exam Horror Story
Posted over 9 years ago on July 22nd, 2002 at 8:25 pm » Article, Personal, Law, Old Stuff.Complete with Happy Ending
With the July 2002 California Bar Exam only a week away, I wanted to share my own bar exam nightmare with anyone overwhelmed with anxiety over having to go through three grueling days of testing. I wrote a good portion of this account back on Tuesday night, Februrary 26, 2002–after my first day of testing. It was my first time taking the California Bar Exam, and no amount of preparation could have prepared me for what happened. Here’s what I wrote, cleaned up for posterity…
In preparing for the bar exam, we hear plenty of bar nightmare stories. Quite a few of these naturally sound rather outlandish, but I discovered today that we can all have our own personal bar nightmares that threaten to engulf us from Day 1. However, each of these stories revolve around the same two themes: be prepared and, more importantly, DON’T PANIC.I had acquired the use of a brand new laptop for taking the bar using Examsoft’s SofTest software. I had used a version of this software throughout law school to take exams and had developed a rather high comfort level with taking law exams on a laptop. This comfort level had evolved into more of a reliance on the software over my 3.5 years of law school, and my bar preparation did not involve writing any of practice essays by hand. However, my own, older, laptop, through overuse (”desktop replacement” indeed!), had a suspiciously noisy fan and certain keys, particularly “E”, “R”, “T”, and “O”, required several strokes just to type one character. The lower-left “power corner” CTRL and SHIFT keys were none too reliable either. Surely a brand new laptop would give me a better shot of having a problem-free exam.Of course, by now you can guess the source of my first-day anxiety. It wasn’t the fact that I felt like I hadn’t studied enough of my substantive law for the bar, or that I had been experiencing problems finishing my performance exams. I had managed to zone that all out of my system by the time I was standing in front of the South San Francisco Conference Center, waiting for the proctors to check us in. I even felt over-prepared as I lugged in both the brand new laptop, which I planned to use, and my old laptop, which I brought as a backup. In fact, everything seemed to be working fine until I started up the exam software, SofTest, on the new laptop and it greeted me with a cryptic error dialog box.
Okay, perhaps SofTest didn’t like me. No problem—I needed only to raise my hand to summon a technician who would magically fix it. A reboot and a rough manhandling of my laptop later and, apparently, I was ready to go. This time, however, SofTest wouldn’t let me type my ID into the Applicant ID box. Restarting SofTest again, I finally got the program to accept my input and waited for the head proctor to tell us to begin.
However, as SofTest rebooted to go into its secure mode, this brand new laptop froze midway through the boot-up process. Fortunately, I had brought my old laptop as a backup and, with the blessing of the technician, booted up that old jalopy. A few minutes later, I was ready to pop in the SofTest diskette and begin.
Well, not exactly. I quickly tried to start up the software, only to discover that the SofTest diskette was blank. The technician, having visited for the umpteenth time, was able to find another diskette for me to use. I finally was ready to type.
That’s right, I was ready to type. After the exam had officially begun and while I was waiting for the technician, I started reading through the question so that I could outline the question and prepare for the possibility of having to write my essays. Although I had to read the question a few times, I was finally able to calm down enough to figure out that I was facing a Civil Procedure question. Erie doctrine–exactly what the bar preparation lecturer said would NOT be on the exam.
But sure enough, I finished all three of my essays, and I had about five minutes to spare. I needed that extra time to run the spell check, which cleaned up any “th’s” (the) and “prcdu’s” (procedure) left in the wake of my hurried typing on that faulty keyboard. By comparison, I could still hear my neighbor typing to the very end, even though I don’t believe that person had experienced any laptop problems.
Hopefully by this time in May, I’ll be able to write a happy ending to this story. I, for one, will always be glad I did two things: coming prepared for more than just reciting the law, and NOT panicking!
Of course, two days later, I had a similar experience. SofTest on the same old laptop that got me through the first day decided to give me the same cryptic error message as SofTest on the brand new laptop did. Fortunately, the technician was able to get SofTest running on the new laptop while I read and outlined the question (a Trusts/Professional Responsibility crossover question–also not completely expected). Again, I finished with a little time to spare. Moreover, I felt elated that I could indeed use the new laptop and its perfect keyboard for the afternoon session. It turned out that I did not have time to run a spell check at the end of that afternoon’s performance test.Like all the other bar exam horror stories, mine did have a happy ending. I passed the exam on my first attempt and took the oath in June. I also discovered the source of those laptop problems: faulty exam floppy diskettes! Apparently, that problem surfaced quite a bit during the Thursday afternoon session, and the head proctor tried to give the technicians more time to resolve everyone’s situation before starting the exam.Good luck to all of those taking the bar exam! Trackback
May 26th, 2003 at 9:50 am
You have an interesting article. I have been debating about getting a laptop to use in the exams. However, to date I do not feel comfortable downloading test software into a machine that I have could possibly limited your capability because of the hooks provides to lock out other software on the system.
I will be taking the June 03 First year exam but I am scheduled to do it the old fashion way by writing.
Ron
May 29th, 2003 at 8:47 pm
Fortunately, in Australia we don’t come across that problem - we may take anything into an exam BUT a laptop!!!!!
Your story reminds me of study week just before my end of year exams last year - my laptop’s fan also made a suspicious noise, was slower than it usually is, and - lo and behold - the keyboard decided to “lift” itself from the mechanism underneath, thus causing the spacebar to whizz along the page with the slightest tap and for the “h”, “f” and “w” keys to type “1″, “z” and “9″ respectively…all a week before the Australian Federal Constitutional Exam! Needless to say, I have a back-up full sized keyboard at the ready should the same happen again this semester (which it did, by the way, but I managed to get it working again by poking a pencil down the keyboard…it’s still holding so far *touch wood*…)
July 9th, 2004 at 11:47 pm
Well, I figure I should respond to these comments–better late than never, right?
Anyway, first to Ronald: don’t let my experience discourage you from using a laptop for your exams. When everything works, using a laptop allows you to organize your thoughts, correct errors, and avoid hand cramps. The testing software only locked out other software when it was in use. I hope you did well on your exam.
To Ellie: I’ve since taken the old laptop back to the store where I purchased it (Fry’s Electronics) because I had gotten their extended warranty. They sent the machine back to the manufacturer, who ended up replacing my motherboard, hard drive, and keyboard. Unfortunately, they didn’t upgrade any of the features in the process. :\
July 26th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Hi,
I just finished the gruelling three day exam today.
The morning of Tuesday went fine with me as far as Softest is concerned. In the afternoon, when I was about to put in my password to pull the file for the performance test. It said I can’t open it up, since I downloaded the files in a different computer. When I attempted to open the file it said, I can’t open it and I am using the wrong computer. Further, the file of the performance test stated it was the "wrong file".
The California bar changed the system whereby the applicants are no longer given diskettes. After the written portions, it is the applicant’s duty to upload the files to softest by a given date.
Going back to the nightmare I am narrating. I have never written by hand a law school exam let alone a performance test exam. When I practiced for the law school exams and for the bar exams’ essays and performance, I always used my laptop since I write with confidence when I type. My penmanship and hand cramps tend to slow me down.
It was an absolute nightmare that pushed me to just walk away. I was tempted to just walk away and take the bar exam the second time next February 2008. I was distraught and depressed. This is my first sitting for the bar. I just wrote through the agony of writing a three hour performance test even if I have not answered an performance by handwriting it.
I thought I was in the twilight zone. I never anticipated that I would take a performance test by writing it.
I have prepared for almost six months. Invested thousands of monies to enroll in a bar preparation course. Borrowed monies to be able to finance time off for the bar preparation. I am working law student. A small glitch in the bar jeopardized a clean shot at passing the California bar in one attempt.
I am sure that performance is flushed down the toilet. I pulled myself together for the next two days. It is not over until it is over. I may be down in the canvass in the first round but I am going to slug it out on the next two rounds come hell or high water. One big fight, as my alma mater’s motto goes.
With God’s Holy Spirit, Thursday went just fine without any Examsoft issue. I flowed smoothly from the beginning to the end with time to put a lipstick on the pig (ie., aesthetics such underlining code, case law, elements).
I am thinking of writing to the California bar and beg them if I can re-take the performance of Tuesday and narrate my story.
I am aware that I am only 1 of the approximate 5,000 people who took the bar this July 2007 and there is a big chance they will not pay attention to one individual, I will perhaps take chance and see what happens.
Realistically, I am preparing for the likely scenario to re-take the February 2008 exam.
Tanking one performance test pretty much does pulls the rug underneath me.
Anyway, thanks for providing a venue for me to vent out.
Ian
September 12th, 2007 at 10:55 am
Wow…that does sound pretty bad, Ian. I, too, took all of my law school exams on laptop when feasible. However, during my bar prep, I did take the time to handwrite a practice exam. I think that helped to keep me settled when my laptop problems arose, but I know my hands cringed at the thought of having to write the entire exam from Question 1.
If you managed to focus on the rest of the exam, hopefully the one question won’t kill you. I find it a little unsettling that Examsoft still can’t get its software to run smoothly after all these years. Good luck!