Mindset/Psychology Archives | Make This Your Last Time

June 20, 2026June 21, 2026 - 5 Comments

Common Traits of Bar Passers & Why Mental Fortitude Is Important for Bar Preparation

They say knowledge is power (and you can never have too much power).

But why is it that with all the information out there, we don’t always get to where we want to go? Why do 80 percent of New Year resolutions fail by February? Remember those? LOL

“If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”

Knowledge is potential energy. It’s what we DO with the knowledge, not the fact that we have it, not the fact that we declare our desire.

If you have the raw material but can’t bring yourself to make a sand castle, if you can’t turn that potential energy in your mind into kinetic energy, what’s the use?

Knowledge applied correctly is power.

The top differentiator I’ve encountered with people taking the bar exam isn’t skills or knowledge. It’s HOW they think and how they approach their studies. The hurdle is often internal.

"half of bar prep involves preparing oneself mentally"

"the bar exam is all about your mental fitness and your ability to retain a crap ton of information without going crazy. Take care of yourself this time around."

If you observe people who have passed the bar exam long enough, you’ll notice some patterns in their behavior:

June 19, 2026June 25, 2026 - 2 Comments

Your bar review course says you’re “on track,” but why does your score say otherwise?

This is me getting increasingly frustrated over the course of every bar season:

I will die on this hill because there’s no reason to make yourself miserable and then forget how to touch grass after the exam because you got attached to the struggle, you masochist.

Others are getting frustrated too. Watch how they don’t trust themselves enough to take ownership of their studies, even when they already know what’s not working:

May 30, 2026June 3, 2026 - 6 Comments

Two Biggest Fears of a Bar Exam Taker

“I need to know all the law first!”

What were those three years of law school for? Never mind.

There’s this strange concern in the atmosphere floating around.

A concern that if you don’t know it all, then you won’t be prepared to solve the problems… The thought that all you need to do well on the bar exam is to “have the information”…

So you sit there, fold your arms, and wait for osmosis. Maybe your soulmate will suddenly come knocking on your door, too.

And then when you finally flip open that essay after weeks of “studying”…

You stare at the blank page.

In front of you, a blank canvas ready to be filled but only reflecting an uncomfortable stillness.

The cursor blinks at you, urging you to fill the awkward silence.

Cold sweat squeezes out of pores you didn’t even realize you had on your body. 😓

“…”

You decide to hit the books and videos again. Maybe you just need to study a little more…

You’re mostly grasping the material, but then when you take a practice exam it’s like everything you know is out the window.

WTF? Why didn’t it work?

May 10, 2026June 10, 2026 - 44 Comments

Should You “Trust the Process”? You’re the Dean of Your Own Bar Exam Studies

Here’s something that people who pass the bar exam never say:

“All I had to do was listen to all the bar course lectures and take a lot of notes. Just complete the course and you’ll pass!”

Sometimes we think “doing whatever it takes” to pass the bar exam means exhausting yourself and throwing 1000 hours and even more dollars into a black hole. (But it doesn’t have to be expensive.)

Or following some unsustainable cookie-cutter schedule that doesn’t care if you have a job or a family. Good luck if you fall behind by one day.

Or letting a perfectly fine morning slip through by religiously sitting through 4 hours of droning lectures. Worse, pausing lectures to fill in all the notes.

Then not even remembering 99% of it.

Rewinding the video for the 5th time because you can’t stop thinking about the Roman Empire

I remember those days. All of those things above are things I stopped doing on my second attempt at preparing for the bar exam.

May 9, 2026May 31, 2026 - 17 Comments

Bar Prep Is Overwhelming: How to Make Independent Choices for Yourself

You have questions about the bar exam. How to study. When to study. Whether you’re on the right track. Picking the right bar prep supplements out of all the resources out there.

"Yes, it is very overwhelming and the amount of resources out there to help are also overwhelming lol"

Here’s how questions go on social media:

“What’s the best program/tutor/outline?”

It makes me wonder: Do you just want to be told with certainty, or do you actually want the objective best?

If you crowdsource the answer, by definition, you won’t know which one is “best” because you’ll get different answers based on everyone’s own experience.

In fact, the more options you have, the more hesitant you get. There are pros and cons to every option.

How would you even trust what’s best until you try it yourself?

There are no secrets, and there are a million ways to pass. It’s always been up to you.

Sounds scary but also freeing, right? You have it in you already.

Sure, sometimes you want to vent and get some support from others. See what other people are doing.

But bar prep is personal. I want to encourage you to listen to yourself a little more instead of blindly being influenced by what someone else says you “need” to do (not just with bar prep but with everything else in life).

That’s where the danger lies. Everyone has an opinion (and sometimes a tutoring service). Is that comment even a real opinion or just an ad? Are you reading something thrown up by AI and not respectful of your attention?

You shop around the astroturf and end up where you started.