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ajghawk549

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General · NEW INFO - Core Curriculum Update - Drilling Feature

ajghawk549

Thursday, Oct 27 2022

Wanted to see if the questions used for the problem sets are included in the pool of questions from which the drilling feature pulls. Will we still encounter the PSet questions during drilling, just in a more random fashion? (If this has been asked, I apologize!)

General · Mental Game / Reading Skills / Pressure Question

ajghawk549

Saturday, Nov 19 2022

@ said:

First of all, you are in the right mindset as you're trying to improve. That's key.

Try to relax or pump yourself up before studying. For example meditate, exercise, play music that gets you going, or anything to get you in the "zone". This will eliminate the nerves that may cause you to misread or keep reading the rules which is ultimately shooting yourself in the foot.

Then, have a specified game plan/routine with the exam itself. For example, you may want to only circle 5 questions when you finish an LR section to go back to for round 2, others prefer 10, everyone got their styles and game plan that works for them. What I want you to do is to feel in control of the test by having a game plan.

- This point is very important so I want to drill it more in your head with a real life example. If I tell you that you need to run an 8 minute mile on the track. With knowing that it's only 4 laps, how would you go on towards doing it? maybe if you're a beginner you will go on full sprinting the first two laps, exhausting yourself and maybe be able to finish the last two. But if have more experience you will have a game plan such as to have a pace of 2 minutes per lap and finish the mile like a walk in the park. You strive to be the second person, when you're in control you feel more relaxed towards achieving a goal you want and most likely will get rid of the nerves.

Another point is to try different methods. You mention that you keep rereading the rules, is this because of lack of practice or is it because you're nervous. If you keep rereading because you don't understand how to interpret "or/not both rule" or a conditional chain then drop the ego and go back. Learn the lesson til you can explain it to someone else in a simple manner, then move on to the next lesson. If you have solid foundations but you are nervous, then set a game plan, trust yourself and see how it goes. If the game plan for LG needs some adjustment then adjust it, that's how you figure out what's best for you in order to perform well.

I have found these to be useful for me and hopefully they will for you. Feeling in control of the test and properly doing BR is how you learn. When you learn, you understand, then you avoid making the same mistakes and then you improve.

Thanks for saying this, all good advice. I could especially use more concrete gameplan improvement, I think. That was especially helpful!

General

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Friday, Nov 18 2022

ajghawk549

Pressure Question

Wanted to see if anyone has advice for improving one's mental game on the LSAT. I'm working through the back end of the curriculum now and have consistently found that my head is not in the right place when I do problem sets. Specifically, I notice that I a) misread often (mistake a 'some' for a 'most' or think the stimulus asks for a sufficient assumption when it, in fact asks for a necessary assumption), b) refer back to the stimulus or game rules in an almost paranoid way which keeps me from actually reasoning and performing the task assigned by the stimulus, and c) have a pretty constant 'under the gun' feeling during problem sets. My brain is foggy and unfocused in a way that keeps me from doing the precise mental work of the LSAT.

Some of this is a reading skills issue. I've heard of ways to work on this specifically, like the basic translation drill from Loophole LR Prep and Powerscore's practice of memorizing all the game rules before beginning. If anyone has any feedback or ideas on implementing these, I would welcome suggestions.

I do think there's something going on below the technical level, here. Like every other 7Sager, I'm putting lots of pressure on myself to perform well. Pressure can be a good, motivating thing, but when my brain sends 'on the Titanic and the last lifeboat just left' signals while I'm attempting to click the correct buttons on a laptop screen, it's gone too far. A simple, if unhelpful, way to remedy this feeling is of course to perform better on the LSAT, but progress is slow for most people (myself included) and attaching worth to performance is generally an unsustainable practice.

Again, I welcome advice or thoughts on any of this. I'll add that I think these are typical struggles in this community, and I have it better than many other 7Sagers, so I'm not posting this as a woe-is-me thread. The hope is that this is a manageable, common problem worth systematically addressing. I couldn't link it but the thread below offers some great mindset advice for the LSAT. I read it as a warm-up for studying some days. If you haven't yet, do take a look.

https://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/2895/the-most-important-lsat-prep-decision-you-will-make

PrepTests ·

PT119.S4.Q23

ajghawk549

Wednesday, Oct 12 2022

#help, really not understanding how J.Y. represents the premise in his explanation. I'm very lost and like to think myself good at overthinking things to death. If untying mental knots interests you please jump in!

The proper translation of 'depends on' is essential to success on this question. Some comments say that 'depends on' is better translated as 'is determined/influenced by.' I see how the phrase might have this connotation. If 'Tim will go hiking depending on whether it rains in the afternoon,' then Tim has accounted for all factors except the rain, so only the presence or absence of rain will affect his decision. As far as conditional logic is concerned, we can say that not raining is sufficient for Tim hiking. However, claiming that not raining causes hiking is totally another story. This is exactly why I don't understand the stimulus.

It's difficult to see the phrase 'depends on' as anything other than a group 2 indicator. It is sensible that a person's exercising implies that they have little to no illness affecting them (Exercise-->low illness), because illness can physically impair the body to the point where the movements required for exercise are very strenuous or impossible. On the other hand, the inverse relationship between illness and exercise proposed by J.Y. doesn't seem uniform enough to claim (low illness -cause-> exercise). It is intuitive that poor health prevents a person from exercising, but you don't need to bring in uncommon knowledge to know that this relationship doesn't work in the other direction; less illness doesn't move a person to exercise. Look at the vast majority of people in everyday life who are healthy--that is, at least not ill--but sedentary. Not being ill is not a cause of exercise unless not being dead, being unconscious, or being (idk) a coffee cup is, too! Drawing a causation relationship from the premise requires a huge assumption: the absence of an obstacle to an activity constitutes the presence of an impulse toward that activity.

So, how does 'depends on' work? Does it always refer to causation logic? If not, by what justification can we claim that the support for this stimulus is about causation rather than sufficiency/necessity? I know I'm missing something, for the record, I just don't know what.