Howdy, preppers! This week's is a shorter post because we are into the regular bar-prep grind. And we'll be here for a while.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

By now you should be well settled into the bar-prep groove Barbri/Themis lectures and assignments, Adaptibar/QBank practice, essays, and the occasional MPT. We're in the phase where each day is like the one before. This will change, but for now: Lather, rinse, repeat.

The one new thing this week is graded essays. Many Barbri preppers have already submitted their first essay for grading, and Themis preppers should submit theirs at the end of this week. To ensure prompt feedback, submit your graded essay when your schedule says to. And pay attention to the feedback. If your grader blesses your essay format, you can switch from mostly writing-out essays to mostly outlining. "Outlining" in this context means fully writing out the rule statement and bullet-pointing the application. Why write out the rule statement? First, so you can't fool yourself into thinking you knew more of the rule than you actually did when you review the sample answer ("oh, yeah--that's what I would have written . . ."). Second, writing out the rule is the best practice for exam day--and the best way to reinforce the rule statement in your overtaxed memory.

Do you listen to music while studying? Should you listen to music while studying? If so, what is the best music to listen to?

Science does not (yet?) have a definitive answer to the question of whether listening to music helps or hurts studying. It might come down to personal preference. But research does suggest that some kinds of music are better than others at improving focus and cognition:

• Music with lyrics hurts more than it helps. Your brain spends some of its processing power interpreting the lyrics (unless--maybe--the lyrics are in a language you don't understand.

• Instrumental music may help. This includes classical, ambient, and Lo-Fi. 

• Music with many transitions (different tempos, different instrumentation) seems to aid focus. Classical music might have an edge here, but a playlist that incorporates different styles, etc. can scratch the same itch (I personally find classical music distracting).

• Avoid music you love or hate. Strong feelings can steal your focus. And you don't want your favorite music to become associated with bar prep!

• Stream commercial-free music if possible. The commercials will totally wreck your focus.

• Very familiar music may improve focus (or at least drown out distractions): Personal, anecdotal evidence here: When I play a very familiar playlist of instrumental music I neither love nor hate, I don't really hear the music--I've heard it so often, my brain doesn't latch on to it. But it can drown out my kids/coworkers/the guy next door running his leaf blower for hours on end.

• Non-musical, indistinct background chatter can improve focus: This is the "coffee shop" effect. Low-volume, indistinct background noises and conversations may improve one's ability to focus. Apps like Coffitivity.com (free and paid versions) leverage this effect without your having to go to an actual coffee shop.

The University of Arizona published a list of study-music playlists on Spotify and YouTube that check these boxes. I've actually used one of the suggested YouTube channels--Quiet Quest, which features hours-long ambient tracks--to focus while grading (warning: the music might help your focus, but the accompanying drone-flying-over-beautiful-landscapes video can be very distracting!).

So: can music help you study? Definite "maybe." If you do listen to music, make it ad-free instrumental music that does not arouse strong emotions.

Sources:

• Souza et al., Should We Turn off the Music? Music with Lyrics Interferes with Cognition, J. of Cognition 6(1) (2023) (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10162369/).
• Sridharan et al., Neural Dynamics of Event Segmentation in Music: Converging Evidence for Dissociable Ventral and Dorsal Networks, 55(3) Neuron 521 (2007).
• Does listening to music help you study? https://liberalarts.tamu.edu/blog/2021/03/10/does-listening-to-music-really-help-you-study/ (2021).
  https://online.arizona.edu/news/best-study-playlists-study-music-focus-music (E-Z Reader version: https://www.healthline.com/health/does-music-help-you-study#best-music-for-studying)
• Mehta et al., Is Noise Always Bad? Exploring the Effects of Ambient Noise on Creative Cognition, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048?seq=1

Questions of the week

Q: Are my daily multiple-choice-question goals in Adaptibar (or QBank) in addition to the question Barbri and Themis assign, or do the Barbri/Themis questions count toward the goal?

A: Adaptibar/QBank questions-per-day goals are in addition to whatever Barbri/Themis assigns to you (but essays and MPTs are cumulative; e.g., if your essay goal for this week is 8 essays and Themis assigns 4 essays to you, do 4 more on your own).

Q: The essay answers in the TAMU MEE bank sometimes reach opposite conclusions. How could the BLE select conflicting answers as "good" answers?

A: Because the conclusion is the least important part of the answer--less important than the rule statement and application. Imagine an essay prompt invokes 5-element rule and the examinee's answer has a perfect rule statement and a perfect application on 4 of the 5 elements. A bad call on the 5th could completely change the conclusion--but the answer is still 9/10ths perfect. So the answer would still score well and could be selected as a "good" answer.

Q. When should I switch from mostly writing essays to mostly outlining essays?

A: As soon as Barbri or Themis grades an essay answer for you and says you've nailed the format. For Barbri preppers who are on-pace, that may have happened already. For Themis preppers, your first graded essay is coming up this week.

Q: How many questions are in Adaptibar? QBank?

A: Adaptibar has 1,608 questions. QBank has 1,807. In both platforms, the number of NCBE-licensed questions (i.e., questions that have actually appeared on the bar exam) is 1,375. Don't worry about completing all the questions and "rolling the odometer" in either platform; Adaptibar will automatically serve up questions you missed the first time through, and you can select "incorrect" questions manually in QBank.

Q: I'm using Barbri/Adaptibar. I've finished all the "foundation" lectures and am into the "deep dives." In Adaptibar, should I be answering questions from all topics, or wait till I hit the "deep dive" for a given topic?

A: I recommend answering questions across all topics now; don't wait for the deep dive. I know the "foundations" did not cover every aspect of every topic, and there are rules you don't know yet. But remember that 80% of the learning comes from answering practice questions (especially when you get the answer wrong). So jump in and start answering questions on all topics, painful though it might be at first.

Week 4 incentive targets

Here are the incentive-drawing targets for week 4: By 10pm on June 1, complete 25.5% of Barbri or 24% of Themis AND 450 questions in Adaptibar or QBank.