"The Bar makes a lot of people wear both belts and suspenders."

I am now almost 3 weeks into studying for the Bar and I'm still not sure if I'm studying enough. BarBri's website indicates that studying 5 to 9 hours a day, 5 days a week is sufficient, but they gave us that damn study schedule with every single day (weekends and holidays included) filled in with hours and hours of work.

I have not yet managed to catch up on all of the assignments I've missed. I'm at a point now where I skip about 25% of the assigned multiple choice and half the assigned essays (although I'd like to go back and do about half of those I've had to skip so far). I'm also trying to memorize the material that we've already gone over, which adds another task I need to do either in lieu of or in addition to the study schedule.

The Contracts professor (as he was showing us a second set of rules to memorize in case we couldn't answer damage problems using the general expectations damage approach) said, "The Bar makes a lot of people wear both belts and suspenders." The problem is that I'm not sure if I'm overprepared, as he suggested many of us might be, or just exercising the right degree of caution.

Even though the BarBri study schedule does give me a bit of anxiety, Bar study is actually somewhat enjoyable. Unlike law school, where I had my share of crummy professors, all of the lecturers for BarBri have been great so far. Since I'm not one of those law school graduates who now hates the law (I know many of them, believe it or not), I am enjoying the opportunity to put together the material I learned these past 3 years and pick up some new tidbits. Unfortunately, that big exam looming on the horizon does take some of the joy out of learning...