You Can't Outrun a Bad Diet ... or Outperform Bad Study Habits
My family and I recently returned from a week-long cruise during Spring Break. While we had a wonderful time during our trip, I came home to the reality that I gained 5.6 pounds!
This shouldn’t be too surprising. The rule of thumb is that an average cruise passenger packs on one pound a day on these week-long trips. Being the optimistic, I actually gained 1.4 fewer pounds than I should have.
But considering I exercised every day of the cruise, being one of the first passengers to jump on the treadmills when the ship’s fitness center opened each day at 6 a.m., I was hoping I would be able to keep my weight steady at its pre-cruise level.
But with all the unlimited and easily accessible food, desserts, drinks—and bacon—throughout the day, it was obviously a losing battle.
This reminds me of the phrase, “You can’t outrun a bad diet.” This phrase suggests that, when it comes to calories, it’s difficult—if not impossible—to create a calorie deficit through exercise when you’re eating poorly. And eating and drinking poorly on the cruise I certainly did!
So, no matter how many minutes and miles I logged, I wasn’t going to lose weight.
I needed to change my eating habits on the cruise. But that wasn’t going to happen. I was on the cruise purposefully to enjoy my time away from work.
I’ll eventually lose the 5.6 points that I gained during the cruise (I hope) now that I’m back home and faced with a more regular routine.
I can’t help but notice how the phrase, “You can’t outrun a bad diet,” can be tied back to bar preparation.
Just like how I can’t outrun a bad diet, one can’t outperform bad study habits. (You can’t imagine the number of times I’ve heard students say, “I didn’t attend three years of law school just to fail the bar exam.” These ill-fated individuals incorrectly believe they can simply rely on willpower to pass the bar exam without realistically assessing their study habits.)
Just like how I can’t outrun a bad diet, one can’t outperform bad study habits.
With the July bar exam about three-and-a-half months away, now’s the time to evaluate (or re-evaluate) your study habits and make any necessary adjustments before beginning your “hardcore” bar preparation.
When you’re beginning your study sessions, do you have a plan or a goal? For example, when you plan to study Torts, do you simply review Torts, or do you tell yourself you’re going to learn, let’s say, Proximate Causation or Strict Liability? Being specific in what you want to achieve in each of your study sessions will ensure you’re moving forward with your preparation and addressing the concepts that need addressing.
Are you prone to distractions during your study sessions? In other words, are your 30-minute study sessions really 30 minutes of effective studying? Or do you find yourself being distracted by checking social media or responding to text messages? If you’re like me, and you’re easily distracted, then lock down your browser and put away the smartphone while you study. You can always check the internet and your messages in-between your study sessions.
At what time of the day do you do your most effective studying? Bar preparation can generally be divided into two categories: learning the content and completing practice questions. You’ll most likely want to learn the blackletter law when your brain is freshest and most rested, which is usually at the start of the day.
What is the ideal length of your study session to retain information? Generally, we don’t learn effectively when we sit and try to learn for an extended period of time. So instead of having a nonstop marathon study session, consider having a focused study session of 30 to 45 minutes, and then taking a short 5- to 10-minute between study sessions. Try to complete at least six or seven distraction-free study sessions (see above) throughout your study days.
Where do you study? While you might have a nice place to study at home, you’ll want to vary your study locations. Even if you’re used to studying regularly at home, consider going to your law school campus or to a nearby library or Starbucks every now and then to switch things up. Research shows that that simply alternating the room where a person studies can improve retention.
Do you incorporate practice questions and simulated exams into your study sessions? You’ll want to incorporate lots more practice problems into your study schedule. Yet, there are a variety of reasons why some graduates don’t Some are valid reasons, but lots of them aren't. One of the most incorrect reasons I hear why graduates don’t take these important practice exams is “I don’t feel ready, and so I’m not going to get the questions right, and so it’ll be a waste of my time,” or some variation of that argument. That is farthest from the truth because they’re looking at the practice questions the wrong way. The practice questions are designed to help you make adjustments in your learning and to help you build that long-term memory so that you can better recall that information on test day—when it really counts. Read my blog post, “When Getting It Wrong Is Good,” for more on this.
Are you completing multiple-choice questions correctly? When it comes to completing multiple-choice questions, I’m surprised at the lack of time graduates spend on reviewing the explanatory answers to the multiple-choice questions they answered. Generally speaking, graduates should plan on spending twice as much time reviewing the explanatory answers as they do completing the questions. So if it takes them 30 minutes to complete 18 multiple-choice questions, they should spend about an hour reviewing all 18 explanatory answers. They should review the explanatory answers to every question, regardless of whether they answered the question right or wrong. After all, they might have answered the question correctly but for the wrong reason. They won’t know this if they bypass the explanatory answers. My blog post, "Are You Completing Multiple-Choice Questions Correctly?," details this a bit more.
You may also want to check out the following 2021 research, “Approaching the Bar: An Analysis of Post-Graduation Bar Exam Study Habits,” to see how your study habits compare.
In that study, AccessLex, with the assistances from the University of San Diego School of Law and Themis Bar Review, recruited recent graduates to participate in a daily time-diary survey that yielded insights into how they managed their studies in the weeks leading up to the bar exam.
The likelihood of bar exam passage is strongly associated with the average number of hours spent studying daily.
Although the average length of study session duration has no significant impact on bar passage, higher numbers of daily study sessions lead to a higher probability of bar exam success.
Studying earlier in the day is more strongly associated with bar passage than studying at any other time of the day.
Employment during the bar preparation period is negatively associated with bar success.
Although graduates who study more hours per day are more likely to pass the bar exam, they are more likely to report running out of time on the multiple choice and essay sections of the bar exam. Graduates who studied an average of 10 or more hours per day are the main drivers behind this finding, indicating that there may be diminishing returns to daily averages of study beyond the 10-hour threshold.
