"And that's when I really mastered the problems."

In yesterday’s blog post, I referenced an episode of the podcast Hidden Brain titled Stage Fright, in which cognitive scientist and Barnard College President Sian Leah Beilock talked about why so many of us crumble under pressure—and what we can do about it.

In the episode, she discussed a conversation she had with her mother after failing a chemistry test in college.

Below is an exchange between Beilock and the show’s host, Shankar Vedantam:

Shankar Vedantam: We talked about that chemistry test in college that you did really badly at. You came in last in a class of 400. After the test was over, you had a conversation with your mom where you expressed your concerns about whether you weren't the right felt for college and she suggested a number of things to you that turned out to actually be quite relevant in actually turning you from a choker to a thriver. What was that conversation like and what did she tell you, Sian?

Sian Beilock: Yeah, so I remember calling her as I was walking back to my dorm after getting the score. And I was just devastated. And I thought I'd done everything right, but she asked just the right questions. She said, "Did you study?" I said, "Of course, I studied." She said, "Did you do the practice problems in the book?" I said, "No, I just read over the chapters." Then she said, "Did you have a study group? Did you see if you knew things just like other people knew them?" I said, "No, I just did it all by myself." She said, "Did you go to office hours?" "No, no, I just read the book like I did in high school," and I did really well in high school. She said, "Well, maybe you just didn't study in the right way." And I took her advice to heart. I realized that I had to do something that I didn't like to do, which were the practice problems, which were not fun. And I found a study group which was helpful to understand what I knew and what I didn't. But when I really figured out how to do this in the right way was that I would go to the study sessions having already studied on my own and we'd quiz each other, trying to get to the answers as quickly as possible. And it was like we were mimicking taking the test in that group. And that's when I really mastered the problems. And it turns out that that's a really great technique to do well under pressure is to practice doing well under pressure. And when we took the second test, I got the highest grade in the class

I encourage you to listen to the entire podcast or read the full transcript. So much of what Beilock discusses is so applicable to preparing for the bar exam.