Does anyone else feel like they have forgotten how to read during bar prep?
Six weeks in and I am reading the same paragraph four times and taking nothing in. It is not that it is hard. The words are just going past me.
Is this a normal stage or is it a sign I need to stop for a bit.
8 replies
Extremely normal, and it is a capacity problem rather than a comprehension problem. Your head is full. It is not taking more in until something comes out.
What worked for me was stopping the moment I noticed it rather than pushing through the paragraph a fifth time. Twenty minutes properly away, no phone, and it usually came back. Pushing through never once worked and it taught me to associate the material with feeling stupid.
The associating it with feeling stupid part is real. I have started dreading opening the file.
Then that is the thing to fix first, before any schedule. Do one easy thing tomorrow. A block of questions on a topic you are decent at. You need one session that does not feel bad more than you need another session.
Switching medium helped me. Same content, different form. Questions instead of reading, or writing index entries instead of reading. Same material, different muscle, and the tired one gets a rest.
Six weeks in with no proper day off is usually the cause when I hear this. Have you had one.
No. Not a full one since June.
Take Sunday. Not a light day, an actual one. You will lose one day and get the next three back, and if you do not take it now your body is going to take it for you at a worse time.
Took Saturday off completely, first real one in seven weeks. Sunday was the best study day I have had in a month. Filing that under things everybody told me and I did not believe.
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