Piece of good news #1.

I passed the patent bar exam yesterday!  I really didn't think I was going to, but I did.  I've been putting off taking the exam for, well, 2 years now (despite there potentially being a monetary reward involved).  The registration process is two parts.  Fill out an application form and mail it to the patent office.  When the patent office approves you to take the exam, you have 3 months to register for and take the exam.  Before Jason left for Australia last October, I had him get me a cashier's check for the application fee (my bank doesn't have branches so getting a cashier's check isn't the easiest thing).  The cashier's check had a 90-day expiration date and despite good intentions to fill out and send in the application during that time, I never did and the check expired.  Attempt #2:  I had Jason get a second check and sent the application in earlier this year.  I received approval to take the exam quickly.  By the time I went to register, all of the Saturdays within my 3-months exam time frame were filled so I opted for the last available Friday within the 3-month period.  

The pass rate for the patent bar exam hovers around 50% and people pay thousands of dollars to take a patent bar prep course (similar to one people take to prepare for the MCAT).  Being the cheapskate that I'm an, I immediately dismissed the option of paying for studying materials.  My study resources:  a set of audio files I obtained for someone who took an expensive prep course (which I didn't listen to), printouts of outlines and sample exam questions I got from a coworker who took a cheaper prep course, and three example exams from the patent office website (from 2002 and 2003).  The recommendation for studying for the exam is to treat it as your full-time job for 2 weeks, i.e., 80 hours of studying.

I kept telling myself that I would start studying for the exam when I registered, giving me approximately 3 months to study.  Ha, but I am the ultimate procrastinator.  Last Monday I spent a few hours going over the outlines.  I took Wednesday and Thursday off of work to study and spent the time going over the practice exams.  A number of questions repeated over the 3 sample exams I took and I've heard from others who have taken the exam that a number of the questions on the exam were ones they've seen before.  For the exam, you are provided with the materials on which you are being tested, which may sound easy; however, they are literally thousands of pages of material for which you are responsible.

There were a few things I was worried about going into the exam.  First, taking the exam on the computer.  The practice tests I took were all on paper where I can make notes, cross out the answers that aren't correct, etc.  Generally, I prefer to read on paper rather than a computer screen, especially when the material is complicated.  So I was definitely worried about  having to take the exam on the computer.  Second, I'm an incredibly slow test taker.  Always have been and suspect I always will be (although hopefully my test taking days are pretty much over).  I always use the entire time taking tasks and frequently don't finish.  Although, the questions are multiple choice, the questions and answers and typically incredibly long and detailed.  Many of the questions provide multiple statements and ask you to determine which ones are true - the answers generally being each of the statements separately and in various combinations - or asking you to determine which one of the statements does not conform with the rules and regulations of the patent office.  I knew the questions were going to be complicated and I knew time was going to be an issue.  The exam is separated into 2 parts, each 50 questions, each 3 hours long.  Just as I suspected, I was short on time.  I wasn't nearly half-way done with the questions when the time was half over.  Although, I did answer all the questions, I wasn't confident in a lot of my answers.  Only a few of the questions were ones I'd seen before and the main topics on which the questions seemed to be focused were different from the ones on which the practice exams focused (understandable since the practice exams were almost 10 years old).

I knew that I was going to get my "preliminary results" immediately and that I needed to get 70 out of the 100 correct to pass.  Based on the amount of time studying, the difficulty of the questions, and the feeling that I didn't have enough time to be as thorough as I would have liked, I didn't think there was anyway I had passed.  I was absolutely SHOCKED when I saw that I had passed.  They don't tell you how many I got right so I have no idea how close I was to the line.  There's a chance that the official results will have that information.  I'm not proud of myself for being such a procrastinator, but I am proud of myself for the passing the exam the first time.