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Hey Everyone, I’m a few days late posting this, but I want to offer a couple of thoughts and (hopefully) some encouragement.
I received my final passing score on May 23 to finish all four sections in right at a year. As a little background, I work full time in a fairly demanding job (some long hours, traveling, and whatnot) and have three young kids at home. I studied roughly 12-16 hours per week and used Wiley as my study material. A typical week of studying usually went something like this – Mon – Thurs, 5-6:45 am them maybe some quick review throughout the day if time allowed, Friday off, Sat-Sun 5-30-8 am, then again from roughly 12-4. Quantity of time is important but quality is critical. You have to own the material. You can’t just let it float by then do a little reviewing like you mostly can in a college course. The way this happens is going to vary from person to person but for me it was doing flashcards and typing out MCQ’s I missed in statement format in a word doc. I also left a full three weeks to review for each test. I used this time to hammer MCQ’s from each topic not going on to the next topic until I felt comfortable. I also continued doing flashcards as well as reviewing my word doc. This long review period was very important and was where things started coming together (at least well enough).
Mindset is also critical. You simply have to stay positive and balanced. There are times you feel like you completely draw a blank after finishing a lecture and each missed MCQ erodes your confidence more and more. Multiple times I found myself staring at the ceiling wondering how long I’d been doing that. In these moments you have to take a deep breath and just keep grinding. It is not as bad as you think. This might sound lame but I would honestly sit there and imagine opening up the NASBA portal and seeing that passing score. You also need to prepare and guard your mindset in the days leading up to the test and in the test it self. Those last couple of days I would only do some light reviewing and instead focus on getting exercise, sleep, and fake feeling confident.
Finally, I want to say thank you to this board. I have checked it several times a week for the last year and always felt encouraged. It was always a huge boost in those anxious moments to know others were in the exact same boat. This post is I hope my way of giving back a little bit. I want you guys to know if I can do it you can too. As you can see from my scores below, I’m nothing special. Hang in there and keep grinding. There’s no easy way around this thing. It takes a ton of work and is zero fun. However, it is doable and you can do it.
Thanks,
JBBAUD 83 8/11/18
REG 75 11/17/18
BEC 77 2/2/19
FAR 79 5/11/19
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