Any lawyer can tell you that awaiting the results of the bar examination is stressful. Now there is a study to prove it.

A pair of psychologists at the University of California, Riverside, tracked the emotional states of 50 law graduates who sat for the California bar exam in 2011. Their goal was to better understand how people cope with the uncertainty while awaiting important news.

They found a general pattern: Stress and anxiety peaked immediately after the three-day exam, and then dropped significantly during the monthslong wait for the results. However, anxiety shot up again in the weeks before the results were released.