It was a relief to have that day over because it meant I could now stop thinking about the special NY subjects and its distinctions and focus on the 6 multi-state subjects. For the next day was the MBE, the 200-question multiple choice test. The morning session seemed hard, but I still finished ahead of schedule and felt kind of ok. In retrospect I wish I might have double-checked some of my answers in the extra time, but it was a toss-up between doing that kind of due diligence and risking undermining my confidence for the afternoon, which was already a little shaky. And by the end of it was completely shot. I was not nearly as fast as I normally was, nothing on it looked familiar, and all I could think about was that I'd just punted the MBE and would now have to take both NY and NJ again, no matter how good my essays were. After all, this was supposed to be my sure thing, the day I was looking forward to that could compensate for iffy essays. In reality, it ended up the other way around.
I did finish a little early, but barely. And I did make myself take some time to go over a few questions. (I had a clump of 5 "D"s running together, and I was pretty sure that probably wouldn't be right. So I did them all again and switched answers for 2 of them. But when I tried similarly to go over some blocks of 3 I couldn't immediately find anything better to answer for any of them so I left them alone.) But there was no way I was going to stay until the end. Within 15 minutes from the end of the exam session no one is allowed to leave the room in order to keep down the noise for the people racing to finish. But I had a commute to Secaucus to get through, and there was no way I wanted to be there when the NY-only exam takers started high-fiving for having finished their entire exam. My sanity required an early escape, so I made one.
The drive itself wasn't so bad, but I felt terrible almost the whole way. I felt sure I had screwed it all up. If only I'd done more practice questions. If only I'd done different questions. If only, if only, if only. None of my massive study efforts mattered; I'd obviously failed to turn over enough of the correct stones and now I was going to fail.
In the light of day, having now talked to other people, apparently this is a normal feeling. Everyone found it hard, everyone left it thinking they failed. And obviously lots of people with this feeling didn't actually fail. I think the negative feelings have something to do with a conversation I'd had with a friend on Sunday:
"Good luck on your exam. I know you'll get an A.""Actually, you don't need an A on the bar exam. You pretty much only need a D-minus to pass."
"Well, then, good luck, and I know you'll get a D-minus."
"Why thank you! That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me!"
Because that's the problem. I know I wasn't doing A work on that exam. And in my mind, if I'm not, I might as well be failing. Besides, I'm not used to doing D-minus work, so I don't have any sense for when it's D-minus work and when it's F work. All I was aware of were the questions I didn't know, which were in great enough quantity to let me know that I wasn't acing the thing. And, of course, all I remember were the questions I didn't know. I have no memory for the ones that I did know, since there was no complementary sense of panic to etch those into my brain.