Comprehensive Exams

So, what kind of test really takes 7 days? Who had that bright idea?? Those were my thoughts as I started my comprehensive exam almost a month ago. The first two days of the exam were spent critiquing a journal article, which was just the warm up. Then I had the weekend off. Starting on Monday, I received an email with 6 questions, and I needed to answer 3 of them plus write up a way to test one of those answers. All in all, it was 46 pages of writing for 5 different parts over 7 days. Along the way, I made comparisons in my mind between the Bar exam and Comps. I would say that preparing for the Bar exam was much better organized than preparing for Comps. However, I think that the actual testing situation of the Bar exam was much more stressful than taking Comps. There is a lot more creativity when taking Comps, but the Bar exam is almost all memorization and recall. I would prefer to never take either of them again!

I am very grateful to Jason's parents, who came and stayed with us for 3 weeks so that I could study for and take the test. We could not have done it without them. So, while I was studying away, the girls and Jason were having fun with Grandma and Grandpa!

And, in case you were wondering, I conditionally passed Comps...which means that I passed 4 out of the 5 parts but need to re-write one answer. When the graduate advisor told me my results, she said that the faculty were impressed with my major answers, but oh did I miss the boat and completely fail my minor answer. Considering that only one person out of the 7 of us who took the exam passed without problem, I don't feel to bad about re-writing one answer. Now if I could only get it written!