Self-study
Hi, I am taking my first LSAT this week. I have studied a lot and I know I am prepared, but I still have really bad testing anxiety and the anticipation of testing day is making me worried that I may start freaking out during the test. My heart beats extremely fast when I am nervous and I am scared that will happen and I will panic.
Does anyone have any tips to overcome this anxiety?
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Thank you everyone for this tips. I really really appreciate it!!
I also struggle with testing anxiety! Here is some of the advice I've gotten that I feel like has been/will be helpful for me:
(1) Know what happens when you get nervous/anxious and what your triggers are. Do you start rushing through questions and missing key details? Do you re-read a passage 3 times without processing anything it said? Then, try and come up with a fall-back plan. For me, I get incredibly anxious when I feel like I don't understand a question at first or I'm stuck between two temping answer choices. When this happens, I tend to spend WAY to long on that question trying figure things out, then I get even MORE anxious because I'm running out of time. Recently, my policy has been if I'm not seeing an answer clearly after 2 read throughs of the stem/stim and after attempting to POE my way to an answer, I pick my best guess, flag the Q and move on. (In general, I've been trying to train my anxiety to brain, if nothing else, to focus on MOVING FORWARD and not getting stuck). I think having a plan for what to do when you feel anxiety come up can be really helpful!
(2) In a similar vein, write down all your anxious thoughts and worst case scenarios before you take the test, then dispel them or come up with a plan for what you will do if they arise. For me, this might look something like"
"You get a really hard physics RC passage and don't understand the concepts at all. --> Focus on passage structure, author opinion, and other people's perspective at the very least. Replace complex terms with letters or other terms. If you don't understand a paragraph after reading it twice, move on and go back if you need to when you get to the questions."
I hope this helps!
Great advice already within these comments. I suspect there are probably at least a few things here that you’ll find genuinely helpful.
I’ll just add one technique that used to be taught pretty heavily to high-level athletes and performers, and that’s visualization.
Not just visualizing yourself getting a good score or “doing well,” but visualizing yourself actually performing the process on test day.
Visualize yourself sitting in the testing center. Visualize yourself reading the passages and stimuli. Visualize yourself engaging in the broader big-picture processes you’ve trained on, as well as the smaller micro-level question movements you’ve practiced over and over again.
In other words, don’t just visualize the outcome. Visualize the activities and processes that lead to the outcome.
And importantly, don’t visualize a perfectly calm, stress-free experience. Visualize yourself feeling some anxiety and then successfully working through it anyway.
Visualize your heart beating faster for a moment, hitting a difficult question, feeling mentally tired toward the end of a section,
feeling uncertainty creep in etc. …and then visualize yourself settling back into your process and continuing forward productively.
That last part matters a lot because on test day the goal is not necessarily to eliminate all anxiety. The goal is to prevent anxiety from knocking you out of your process.
A lot of students walk into the LSAT nervous. Chances for a strong performance increase the more you keep operating effectively while some stress is present.
Best of luck and I hope that helps!
Honestly, this exam coming up is in just another PT. You just need to treat it like that. Do you usually feel this anxiety when you are doing PTs? I know it is easier said than done, trust me I sometimes even overhype PTs, but we just have to treat this exam coming up like it is something we have done before, because it is. You got this!
WERE LOCKED LETS GOOOO
I am a huge nervous test taker (especially for standardized exams as such) and I found that when I got into the prooctering room my body and mind LOCKED IN. While even PTing I get nervous.
I hear a lot of stories on how people who are nervous test takers end up doing better than they are PTing because when their mind knows its time to lock in, it locks in!
Goodluck! I'll be taking mine in two days!
@Catpop this was great advice
I struggle a lot with text anxiety and I've realized that when my heart starts racing my mind won't calm down until my body does -- when I get panicked I focus on 478 breathing (4 seconds in, hold for 7, out for 8). It usually only takes 3-5 of those breaths for me to find a calm center again. Good luck!
Hey Karin!
This is very real, and I can very much relate. Apologies if I'm repeating something you've already heard/have thought of, but this is what helped me!
Minimizing unknowns. If you're taking your test remote, set your room up how it'll be for your test, and study there. If you're taking it in person and visiting the testing center beforehand is feasible, pop by and figure out roughly where you might have to park. Plan out what you're going to do on testing day: when are you going to wake up? What are you going to do for breakfast or other meals? Are you going to do the crossword? You don't' have to pack your schedule, but minimizing the amount of time you have to sit in silence freaking out is ideal, even if it's something like, "after breakfast, I'm going to mindlessly scroll for 20 minutes."
Practice sitting down and feeling your feet on the floor. Some people like focusing on their breathing, but I feel like that freaks me out, personally. What do the soles of your shoes feel like? Are you wearing cushy socks? Feel how solid the ground is. If you feel your heart during the test, take a second to repeat the process. Your heartbeat may be going crazy, but there's an entire planet underneath you that (lovingly) does not care how well you do on the LSAT.
This might seem counterintuitive, so take it with a grain of salt, but I've found it's an incredibly common experience that over the course of at least the first few questions, people feel like they've forgotten everything, and it's going terribly. That they thought they were well-prepared, but they were wrong. While that's very valid, it's rarely accurate. Like you said, you know you've done the work. You know you're prepared. So when and if that feeling comes, know that it has no basis in reality. You're doing better than you think. For me, when I expect that feeling to come, then if it does actually arise, I can say, "ah, yes. Here you are. Welcome. Please take a seat here in the back part of my brain." Trying to tell yourself not to be anxious can (as I'm sure you are well aware of) be a Sisyphean task. So let it in!
This is the June test. I'm not sure what your timeline is, but even if you want to get your apps in the second they open, you still have the August test. If that's viable for you, sometimes it can help to pretend (or actually think) that this is your dress rehearsal. Your main goal for this test is just to see what it's like, and pressure test whatever testing strategies you have. Absolute worst case scenario is that you sit down again in August. But a June test? Low stakes.
I hope that helps!
Hi!
My name is Asma, and I'm a tutor here at 7Sage.
What you're feeling is totally normal, especially before your first official LSAT! I remember feeling the same way. Something that really helped me was reminding myself that feeling anxious doesn't mean I'm not ready.
If you notice your heart racing during the test, try not to see that as a sign that something is wrong. Just notice it, take a slow breath, and gently bring your attention back to the question in front of you. Remember, your goal isn't to feel perfectly calm. It's to use the skills you've practiced so much.
At this point, trust all the work you've put in. The official LSAT is just like the practice tests you've already taken. You've got this! Wishing you the best of luck this week.
Best,
Asma