Self-study
Hi guys! I'm taking the June LSAT at the end of this week. I'm just posting to ask if anybody has any burnout-related info or advice.
For some context, I've been studying consistently for about two months now. I haven't really found myself struggling prior to this week. During the second week of May, I took two practice exams and scored a 161 and 162. During the third week of May, I took one practice exam with double time to focus on accuracy and scored a 166, which is my best so far.
Last week, I started working a full-time internship (five days a week, 9am-5pm, plus three hours of commuting because of traffic🥲). My score immediately decreased and I got two 156s. I've had a really hard time focusing on studying each night and I've been feeling somewhat more rushed with the time constraints than normal. I also have ADHD and testing anxiety so thats probably not helping this situation lol. Could this sudden score decrease be from work-related burnout, and has anybody else experienced anything similar? I was planning to take off work the day before my exam to recharge, but now I'm worried that won't be enough to reset my brain. I'm just not totally sure what to do here. Thank you and good luck to everyone testing this week!!
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4 comments
I began working a couple of weeks ago and I saw a score drop as well. I thought it might be due to burnout and my brain being too full to concentrate. I took a bit of time to calm down and reset my mind and my most recent score has been my best yet. I think drilling the week of the test is not as important as taking time to make sure you’re in the right headspace (and have enough sleep) to perform well on test day. Don’t let the past week or two of scores get you down, sometimes our brains can only process so much, and you need to give it a break so it can do its thing.
Those scores can likely just be attributed to normal score variation, sure your routine switched up a bit, but I wouldn't stress yourself out. Two PTs is a very small sample size and score variance +/- 8 points is super normal. Try to just focus on continual improvement instead of hyper fixating on a number (ik it's hard to do.)
I got prescribed a beta blocker and it has done wonders for my test anxiety
I have no advice, but I'm totally going through the same thing. Just know you are not alone. I'm trying to cut back a little, and try to focus more on mindset, since I think it's for me nerves that is the cause. I feel that more drilling is probably not the solution for this kind of thing, so I'd say try to chill out a bit. I think we will be fine!