What It Felt Like to Fail—and What I Learned

Yep. The day after I finished sharing what I had done since the exam—and uploaded the website—I got hit squarely by the feeling of failing. The cutoff was 538; I scored 464, nowhere close. Still, compared with last year’s cutoff of 487 and the state of my own preparation, I was optimistic overall.

I had expected for a long time that I probably would not pass this year. But the questions actually felt unusually well suited to me. There was plenty I had never seen—or had not finished studying—yet the way the questions were designed kept me writing for two full days when I had expected to sit there blankly. Somewhere inside, I started thinking I might have a chance. I let myself hope a little, and I was anxious for a long, long time before the results. Then, exactly as expected, I failed. That brought my losing streak from PS5 and graphics-card lotteries over the past half year to twenty-eight. Thank you very much, national examination.

I wonder whether failing a national examination can be traded for one chance to buy a disc-edition PS5 at retail—or an RTX 3070 Ti at retail XD.

You might say: people normally post success stories. Why post about failing? It looks so unlucky.

Because I want to face my shortcomings and failures honestly, remember how this setback felt, work out what went wrong, and use this post to gather myself before setting out again. If I cannot be honest about my own problems, what right do I have to stand in front of students and tell them how important it is to review their exam papers? XDDD Leading by example matters for a teacher, too.

How I Prepared for Each Subject

My plan for the national examination was this: first, finish one pass through the textbooks for every subject and make sure I had a basic understanding. Then use multiple-choice questions to correct anything I had misunderstood or had not understood clearly. Only in the final stage would I use problem-solving books and lots of practice to fix my writing method and catch up on newer legal views.

Around April of the previous year, I had just finished one pass through all the textbooks. Right as I was about to begin multiple-choice practice, the pandemic exploded and I threw myself into online teaching. Everything stayed on hold until September, when I was finally released from online classes and could return to multiple-choice work. By then, fewer than sixty days remained before the first stage, which had already been postponed twice.

I sat the first stage after doing only a few multiple-choice books and no past papers at all. I had never passed the first stage before, yet somehow I barely scraped over the qualifying line for both the lawyer and judicial-officer tracks.

I still had not finished the multiple-choice work, but I had no choice except to begin preparing for essay-style problems. Having never written one before made the two months before the second stage extremely, extremely painful. From waking up until going to bed, everything was law. In the end, I entered the exam after covering only about twenty percent of the problem-solving books and cram-school materials.

My preparation was incomplete in almost every subject. In insurance law, I had only reached exclusions from coverage—and still wrote that question terribly, heh. In civil law, I entered after finishing only the general-principles problem book. It felt exactly like the first-stage exam I once took blindly while writing my thesis. Several subjects had a grand total of zero problem books completed. In the examination room, I felt naked.

What Writing the Exam Felt Like

The first time I ever wrote a national-examination problem was in the actual examination room.

With preparation like that, I expected to sit blankly for two days and spend both days staring at the Ferris wheel. To my surprise, I could identify the main issues in quite a few questions.

But only the issues I had studied—which was about twenty percent.

For everything else I was unsure about, I could only write whatever came to mind and invent something that looked vaguely plausible. Still, I filled my papers for two whole days. I remember leaving the room with a sudden thought: ‘Wait… did I actually have something this time?’

The evidence later showed that, of course, I had absolutely nothing—fuck. Otherwise, why would I be here writing this post? XDDD

It perfectly proved the saying: ‘If you walk out of the examination room feeling completely certain, the result will be either very good or very bad.’

A Short Review of Each Subject

After teaching for so long, I do not think doing badly on an exam is that catastrophic—especially because this was not a life-defining event for me in the way the GSAT or AST can be. But if I spent the time, I should review it, identify my problems, and decide how to improve.

Yes, yes, I know I need to finish the books first XDD. Next time I will properly complete the problem-solving books and past papers =口=.

Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure

I ran out of time in criminal law. I clearly handled the elements of only one person’s conduct; my treatment of the other person was mostly random and barely had any space. There was also an obvious unauthorized-card-use issue in the property-crime question that I missed. Even with more time, I would not have known how to address it because I had not studied it yet. Hehe. In criminal procedure, I identified the issues clearly, but I did not cite the Grand Chamber ruling, and the parts I did not know were a complete mess.

I had that result coming.

Constitutional and Administrative Law

I had built a dedicated template for fundamental-rights review and another for separation of powers. I had even studied local self-government. Constitutional law was probably the subject I felt most confident would earn points. Sorry—this year all 100 points were on constitutional litigation, exactly the part I had not studied at all. I could only make things up and wave goodbye. Yet somehow I still got 43 points. This was the score that made the least sense to me.

In administrative law, I was confident about roughly half the material. The issues were clear, so I wrote that half in meticulous detail. Sure enough, I received about half the points. That result was entirely deserved.

Civil Law and Civil Procedure I

What issues can someone identify after reading only a problem book on the general principles of civil law? Yeah, I would like to know too.

The first major question focused mostly on the law of obligations, so I went down immediately. The second was on family law. I thought there might be room to work with it, and I spotted the crucial issue involving a will written by another person—but I did not know how to write the analysis XDDDD. Distribution of the estate was not a major problem, nor was the gift causa mortis. My score matched almost exactly the proportion I actually knew how to answer, which was not surprising.

Civil Law and Civil Procedure II

There was joinder of parties, while the other major question devoted the whole thing to issue-framing procedure and the scope of res judicata. What I genuinely knew how to write was, at most, amendment of claims and issue framing. The score reflected exactly that.

Company, Securities, and Insurance Law

This was the subject I felt best about after finishing. I had always been terrible at it—absolute shit—but after this second-stage exam I decided to embrace company and securities law XD.

In securities law, I had specifically studied the very detailed gross-profit/loss and net-profit/loss methods, so I received almost full marks. In insurance law, I could tell the question concerned exclusions and special policy clauses, but spotting an issue does not mean writing it well, so I answered with zero confidence. Naturally, I got well under half the points. Company law was… another case where I saw the issues and thought my answer was decent, but my argumentation clearly needed work. The answer was fragmented, and the score was only barely acceptable—though still above half.

Chinese

I had always been good at Chinese composition on the GSAT and AST. I have no idea why essay writing defeated me here: I got only 45 out of 100. Whatever. I genuinely do not know what to say about this subject.

Labor and Social Law Elective

I had read this subject once at most. I had barely gone through labor law and social law, then never opened them again. The main questions covered minimum service periods, the rules and effects of arbitration, and finally a well-known social-law dispute concerning survivors’ pension claims under the Labor Insurance Act.

For the effect of arbitration rules, I essentially copied the statutes and filled the page. I was sure I had answered the question, yet I unexpectedly received only half the points. Because I had not read much in this area, I honestly do not know what the grader wanted in the other half. That death felt a little unfair. The social-law issue was the same old story: I could see it, but I did not necessarily know how to write it XDDD.

Conclusion

This national-examination experience was also an experiment. I wanted to see whether, as many people say, you must cite judgment numbers, memorize Constitutional Court interpretations, write in large characters, and state a conclusion in every issue heading to receive a decent score. In this experiment, I deliberately did the opposite: no interpretation numbers, no judgment numbers, tiny handwriting, and no conclusion in the headings.

At first, I felt I had died without understanding why. Once I saw the point distribution, I accepted it completely: at this level, this score was inevitable—although the arbitration-effect part in labor and social law still felt a little unfair XD. I had assumed I could bluff through some things and perhaps trick out a few points. The truth was that I could not fool the graders. In securities law, where I knew the answers with complete confidence, I received the score I should have. The same was true for issue framing in civil procedure and parts of administrative law. The pleasant surprise was that I could identify the issues quite well. Apparently, my instinct for spotting them had begun to develop.

This experience taught me something else: when you do not understand something and write a mountain of nonsense, anyone who does understand will see immediately that you are bullshitting and have no substance. Solid points come only from genuinely understanding what the question asks, engaging it precisely, and fully applying the law to the facts.

I went into battle after finishing only twenty percent of the problem-solving books and writing no past papers. Since I had deliberately taken a different approach to studying, failing my first second-stage attempt was inevitable. Still, scoring 464 with only two months of preparation felt, to me, like a pretty good fight. It also gave me a glimpse that passing was only a matter of sooner or later.

I was sad, yes—for about an hour. I am also grateful to the friends who kept me company before and after the results. During those two months, I did many things I had wanted to do with my life and cleared a long list of tasks. I also used the opportunity to put myself back on the job market and see what my current value looked like.

I will still give the exam another shot this year. But as planned, I will no longer spend this much time preparing for it. Many other parts of life need to move forward. Time to send out résumés X).