How I’m staying calm before the October LSAT

Over the last 10 years, I’ve found that I default to three things when I’m dealing with a lot of self-doubt or anxiety:

1. Movies. I’ve been watching old, feel-good movies from the 1980s, like Overboard with Goldie Hawn (if you’re a girl who loves rom-coms, this one is great). The Secret Life of Walter Mitty also always makes me feel more adventurous and hopeful about the world. I also love Silver Linings Playbook - it reminds me that the characters we relate to and gravitate toward are often messy and imperfect. There’s something comforting about that, and it takes some of the pressure off wanting a perfect score or a perfect career. Finally, the scene in Bridesmaids where Melissa McCarthy's character gives Kristen Wiig's character a pep talk is always a motivational tearjerker for me.

2. Comedy. I’ve been binge-watching Jimmy Carr lately. His humor can be pretty crude, but he’s also incredibly smart and often gives surprisingly insightful and genuine advice. I’ve especially been enjoying his YouTube Shorts.

3. Reading stories about successful people who have failed. Some of my recent favorites:

   • Vera Wang: Failed to make the U.S. Olympic figure-skating team and was later reportedly passed over for the editor-in-chief position at Vogue. She pivoted and launched her bridal business around age 40, becoming one of the world’s most famous designers.

   • Toni Morrison: Her first book was rejected by multiple publishers and initially sold poorly when it was finally published at age 39. She later won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature.

   • Steven Spielberg: Was reportedly rejected from both USC and UCLA’s film programs because of his grades, but kept making films and eventually became one of the most successful directors in history.

Surprisingly, ChatGPT also gave me some advice that really helped calm me down:

1. Hard questions are supposed to feel hard. Even people who score 175+ encounter questions and passages that feel difficult. I’ve had plenty of passages and drills where I thought something was incredibly hard, reasoned my way through it, and ended up getting -0.

2. How you feel isn’t necessarily how you did. I got a 2380/2400 on the SAT in high school (yes, I’m a little older, if you can tell from the scale lol), but I nearly canceled my score because I was convinced I had tanked it after comparing answers with a girl I thought was way smarter than me. My mom convinced me that, after all the time I’d spent studying, I owed it to myself to see my score. It ended up being the highest I had ever gotten - even higher than my practice tests.

3. You don’t know which section is experimental. If I think I bombed one section, my instinct is to think, “Well, I’ve fucked up the whole test.” But that section might not even count.

4. Remember you’re surrounded by your people. Taking the LSAT at a testing center actually brings me some comfort because everyone in that room understands what I’ve been going through - we’re all going through it together at that exact moment. It makes me feel a little less alone.

5. Shrink the timeline. Don’t think about how much the LSAT matters, what score you’ll get, or where you’ll get into law school. Think about the single question in front of you. That’s all you need to solve right now.

6. Give yourself a safety net if it helps. I purchased Score Preview - not because I plan to cancel my score, but because knowing I have an absolute last resort gives me some breathing room and takes some pressure off test day.

I’d love to hear any other tips or thoughts people have for calming themselves down!