Dr. Mary Campbell Gallagher's BarWrite® Tips for Avoiding Stress and Panic in the Final Weeks of Study
NEW YORK--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--The bar exam starts Tuesday, July 28. What can bar candidates do to avoid stress and panic, and so study more effectively, during these intense final weeks? Bar-exam expert Dr. Mary Campbell Gallagher, President of BarWrite®, which offers bar-preparation courses in New York City, asked her students for ideas for reducing stress and maximizing study results, and she chose these ten suggestions:
1. Make a realistic daily schedule that includes both study and exercise. Plan for variety in your studying, and stick to your plan. Get up early and do your most challenging studying first. Take a five-minute break every hour. Work steadily. Do not aim for speed, which just causes stress and reduces how much you can learn.
2. Pray. Do yoga. Use meditation or hypnosis tapes. Get a full-body massage the last week.
3. Stay away from electronic devices which intensify stress, Facebook, MySpace, blogs, text messaging, and email. Turn your cellphone off. Use earplugs while studying.
4. Get plenty of sleep.
5. Schedule some time on one special day each week for taking care of yourself. Get a haircut, do your grocery shopping, clean your room.
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We interrupt this message for a word from our sponsor. BarWrite will offer the famous One-Day All-States MPT Boot Camp on Monday, July 20, and the notorious Three-Day New York Bar Essay Boot Camp on Tuesday, July 21, Thursday, July 23, and Friday, July 24. All will take place at the New York City Bar Association, 42 West 44th Street. For more information, or to enroll, visit http://www.BarWrite.com.We now return to our message. *********
6. Schedule 15 minutes every day for having fun. Walk your dog, play a musical instrument, horse around with your children. Read something enjoyable before bedtime.7. Have one supportive person you can speak to for 10 minutes a day, your safe person.
8. Focus on how much you have done to prepare, not on how much you have not done. If you do what you plan to do every day, that's all you can hope for. Your results on the bar exam are in the hands of the gods.
9. Breathe deeply. Breathe in for seven counts, hold for one count, exhale slowly for seven counts. Repeat until calm. Relax. Smile.
10. Finally, perhaps the man who made this last suggestion was not serious: Listen to Barry Manilow recordings while you study, to increase the pain. Then you will never want to take the bar exam again.
BACKGROUND ON DR. MARY CAMPBELL GALLAGHER and BARWRITE®. A graduate of Harvard Law School who holds the Ph.D. in linguistics, Dr. Mary Campbell Gallagher is president of BarWrite® and BarWrite Press, which offer large courses preparing candidates for the bar exam, and author of the book and CDs Scoring High on Bar Exam Essays. The St. John's Law School Forum called Scoring High probably "the best money you can spend on bar exam preparation." Dr. Gallagher's next book, How to Organize for High-Scoring Performance on the Multistate Performance Test (MPT), is due out in October. A widely-published writer, Dr. Gallagher lectures at universities around the country and is also an Adjunct Instructor in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies at New York University. For information on BarWrite courses and publications visit http://www.BarWrite.com.
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