Don't Let Missed Questions Bother You on Exam Day
Next week, my father and I are playing in the Father & Son Team Classic golf tournament in Myrtle Beach. Except for when the tournament was cancelled in 2020, we’ve made the trip to South Carolina each July since 2007.
This year will mark our 15th year playing in the tournament. That means 42 matching golf outfits so far!
My father just turned 79 years old, so there won’t be too many of these tournaments left. Since our first tournament in 2007, we’ve won our flight once, contended a few other years, and come in last place many more times. Our best days of golf are behind us, but it’s still good to share three days of golf with my father, my own children, and other fathers and sons during the tournament.
I remember the first piece of advice another participant told my father and me before when we started playing these tournaments back in 2007: “Don’t apologize to your playing partner.”
He explained his advice a bit more: During the three days of the tournament, you’re going to hit some really solid shots. But you’re going to hit some really bad shots, too. And during the alternate shot format—when the first player tees off, the second player hits the second shot, the first player hits the third shot, and so on until the ball is holed—one player will put the other player in a bad position.
Did you mean to hit the ball in the water or in a bunker? Of course not, so don’t say, “I’m sorry,” he said.
He ended with this: “Just forget about the bad shots and just focus on the next shot.”
It’s all great advice.
Nobody’s perfect—and even the best golfers in the world can’t birdie every hole, or even have a bogey-free round. Over the course of a professional tournament, professional golfers will have 72 holes to compete against the golf course.
Over those 72 holes, professional golfers will hit, on average, around 288 shots. Some shots will be good. Some will be bad. But the best golfers in the world will not let the bad shots impact the rest of their performance over the four days of the tournament.
Even former No. 1 golfer Dustin Johnson understood this. He once explained: “I’m the best player in the world, I hit some of the worst shots you’ve ever seen. But I go find it and hit it again. Obviously not all of them are bad but I do hit bad shots. It’s managing those shots and not letting it bother you and going and hitting the next one good.”
You should adopt this mentality as you complete the MBE. You’ll have 200 questions on the multiple-choice exam. You’ll answer some questions right and some questions wrong. In fact, if you’re average—and remember that average is good on the bar exam—you’ll likely going to answer 70 out of the 200 questions incorrectly. And there may be several questions that could just very well stupefy you. Maybe you didn’t recall the law. Maybe it’s the one area you decided not to focus on. Maybe it’s a pilot question testing a weird principle that’s not even going to count against you.
Whatever may be the case, remember that you’re going to get questions wrong. And it’s just human nature to remember the questions we missed rather than the countless of questions we actually answered correctly.
But you don’t want a few difficult questions here and there on the examination to impact your performance on the rest of the exam. Just chalk up those questions to one or more of the 70 or so questions that it’s okay to miss.
Be like Dustin Johnson on the golf course—don’t let it the hard questions bother you as you answer the next questions.
