interested!

Honestly, I'm not sure what your schedule has been or anything, so it's hard to say. I can understand where you're coming from though.

You might need a break, study group/partner, or ironically, teach someone what you know. If you'd like, you can DM me and I'd be open to being your study buddy.

Searching for where you can improve and how you can best support yourself can be stressful, discouraging, and confusing. I get that. The LSAT teaches us how we learn best and helps us to prep for LS.

Yet, I also realize it's difficult to see what's needed when you're "too close" to the problem/scenario. That's also one reason I suggested teaching someone. When you are explaining things to someone else, their feedback offers a new perspective. Their confusion may require you to do some deeper digging. It also helps to solidify what you know, builds confidence, and helps with pacing. Having a fresh perspective throughout study and review can be helpful.

Interested! I'm on PST

There is a place called granitetestprep.com where they offer a mindfulness course just for test anxiety. I believe it's about $15. They also offer 1:1 counseling and test prep support. I know you aren't looking to raise your score and get help that way, but they will support you with test anxiety.

Personally, I failed out of college on my first attempt because of test anxiety. Every semester I would do well on assignments but exams would account for 50% of my grade. With each passing semester, I was on academic probation, which exacerbated the stress. One day, I was teaching SI for chem and actually tutoring other classmates. We walked across the yard together and I was giving them all praise for their hard work. When I got the test booklet and scantron, I wrote my name and began to feel how tense the room got. I felt how close each of the students were sitting close to me. I felt dizzy. I couldn't even spell my name out. I went on to begin the test, doing mindful breathing, but I couldn't comprehend what the questions were asking me to do. I felt so insane. My heart started pounding and I was telling myself not to pass out there. I shut the booklet and tried to talk myself down. I asked myself what the worst that could happen would be? Is it better that I at least try to get some right rather than not to try at all. I told myself I'd just done the work and how proud I was of myself. Immediately thereafter, I slowly opened the booklet and read the questions. I couldn't get it. I told myself it was ok and to skip to the next one...the next one, then the next one. My vision started to blur and tears started coming down my face. I started to feel a tight pain in my chest and my stomach began to hurt. I felt like I was going to vomit. My head hurt so much. I left. As I walked down the hall, feeling as though I would faint, I stumbled into the bathroom and fell to the floor. My heart and chest were tight and the pains were so sharp. I honestly thought I was dying. I didn't know what was happening to me. I didn't have control of my legs. They were just weak. When it passed, I just cried. I couldn't take it anymore. I just left school and didn't return until 4 years later. I went to an extension school and finished my degree. I didn't realize that I would even want to try grad school or even that those first grades would count, or else, I would have just started over and not transferred the passing grades. Now I'm a splitter and once again, that test pressure is on. You know what though? We can do this.

I have been running away from this test and the GRE since 2017. I couldn't even calm down enough to study for it. Mindfulness and meditation have helped me. I do Headspace. I've also read Creativity in Business and Excellent Sheep, which have changed my attitude about these results and systems in place. CIB was a Stanford course and is now a center there that incorporates mindfulness to allow you to reach your highest potential and unlock creative thinking by removing expectations and fear. ES is written by a Yale professor who discussed how our system brings unnecessary stress, which stops students from reaching their best potential. Both books acknowledge that it's not us and offer solutions.

Introspection and therapy help as well. Anxiety is fear of the future. What are you afraid of? Is it that the proctor is watching? What makes this different? I'm sure you know but that fear of the worst possible outcome will cause it to come to fruition, but I know sometimes we intellectually know things don't make sense but we get so caught up that we can't help ourselves. Listen, I haven't taken the real test just yet, but let me tell you, you aren't alone. Those people you're trying to help. The things you will learn...Those experiences you will have... The regrets you won't have...that's worth it. Keep going.

I'd love to join!!

Hi, I'm interested

I will get a 175+ on the November LSAT. I have overcome so much. Even as I face traumatic circumstances, I am in the best company I could be in: myself. I am a brave, brilliant advocate that leads a life of integrity, empathy, and self-awareness. There is no better journey I could be on. I am learning so much about myself. The LSAT continues to sharpen my reasoning, communication, and comprehension skills. For a test I have run away from for nearly 5 years, it has supported me in my evanescence towards becoming my highest self. Finally, I will materially realize my highest potential outside of what I know in the shadows of my mind to be possible, and see it in realtime. I will celebrate this 175+ score on the LSAT, not as proof of worthiness or who I am but that people can finally see what I knew to be there all along. We all doubt ourselves sometimes, maybe even more often than not. However, we all believe in ourselves in some way, or else we wouldn't be here. Don't be too afraid to speak this intention or dream into existence aloud, or type it in a public forum. You are capable. Don't forget that your first client is yourself.

Best of luck to us all! Or as they say in Star Wars, "May Warrior's Fortune shine upon you." (You probably thought I'd refer to The Force) Listen, we fought so hard, even during the times we didn't feel up to it anymore. I don't know about you but oftentimes it was obvious to me that I wasn't fighting this test as much as it was my own shadows of doubt/insecurities. We had to uncover how we learn best, provide that to ourselves, and do all that we could to support rewiring our brains to think differently and quickly in a high stakes environment. You have overcome a lot. Cheers!

Hi, @!

Reader's Digest version:

Choose ONE resource to get a foundational understanding and techniques from

After you do this and notice gaps, pick up a resource that is best known for covering the given gaps. Say you have trouble with flaws for LR and numeric inferences for games. LT helps with both in the beginning of the book (as you know). If that isn't good enough, go to LH for flaws...then keep going until you understand. Always ask yourself what you're missing. Have that goal in mind when picking up another resource

Don't skip through resources because you might not understand the language when they get to what you're looking for. This is why you get a good understanding 1st so you can breeze through foundational chapters of new materials (saving time).

-Try the drills in the books (if you have it in you) just for practice- you may walk away surprised you need to revisit something and if not, there's still nothing wrong with practicing

-Try to learn how to understand what in the stimulus is important first, if you can (LH does this)

What I did (Vox explainer version):

I know exactly what you mean about overburdening yourself with materials. I am still trying to figure out how to ensure I'm not doing that, which is why I haven't tried 7Sage just yet, though I have a feeling I should. What I did was I got a good grasp of all of the question types first. It was important to just get straight-forward techniques without overcomplicating the process. The less I leaned on intuition, the better. Once I drilled and mastered both easy and midlevel questions for each question type using the techniques, I made and studied flashcards of the techniques, language used for specific questions, etc. Each week, I went through probably 2-3 question types, each with both easy and mid-level. I did 12-24 of each level within each type and kept my wrong answers. I went over them and didn't move on until I understood what was wrong and why. Some things come with time so you just have to know yourself enough to be able to discern which things you should stick with vs moving on. I wouldn't move to the next level of a qt unless I got -3 or less. Every Friday (or at the end of the week), I would go over all of the incorrect questions from that week and try them again. As I went along through each qt (question type), I kept 3-5 of the tougher questions from each and revisited them at the end of each week so I wouldn't forget what I'd learned. After I got through half of the QTs, I started taking sections (untimed) once per week and only did the QTs I'd covered. The main thing here was accuracy. Same 3 or less rule applied. If I missed more than 3, I studied the questions, did another section only doing qts I'd covered. I took note of any trends I saw for incorrect answers (I didn't have any but some people do, which is actually good because you know you need to go back and focus on a specific qt). Once I got through all of the QTs and my accuracy was good with 3 or less, I started taking timed practice tests just for the LR section while I began picking up games. That's when I noticed that I was all over the map with results. Camo review in Loopholes is great for saving time for reviewing pts.

At this point, I went through LSAT Trainer (I got halfway through and I'm still going). The reason I did it this way was so that I could see where my gaps in understanding were using the practice tests. I knew from trying LSATMax and getting through 1/2 of their program that contrapositives, sufficient and necessary, and numeric inferences got me. I also knew being able to say specifically WHY something didn't work was difficult, which is important for flaw questions etc.

I didn't skip around within a given book/material because each lesson builds upon the previous one. It took time and patience to start LSAT Trainer. I mean, who wants to keep starting from scratch and learning all of these different ways of doing something? The thing is, I knew the techniques I used worked but there were certain concepts that required clarity. My mom used to say, "if it doesn't apply, let it fly." If I knew the techniques I've been using came easier to me and were better, I kept them. If not, I replaced them with what was in LSAT Trainer (LT). I found that LT filled in some gaps in understanding for a few question types. I will continue to go through it for LG/RC but for now, I'm going to stick with Loopholes (LH) for LR.

I moved on to LH because it focuses on LR and I had enough experience to know I still needed help. Sometimes, I didn't even know why I got some things wrong (even with my tutor.) It's hard to ask for help when you don't understand...well, what you don't understand. With LH, my goal was to get more clarity on what each stimuli was actually saying. I was doing well, but I realized after going over things and hearing how my tutor understood answers/stimuli to mean one thing, and I saw something different, I needed drills on comprehension. I also still lacked understanding of the aforementioned concepts, and needed to improve my speed. What bothered me was that I knew I wasn't doing my best. Sometimes I would get -3 and get to each question, others -9 and also miss out on doing 3-4 questions. When I would go over the questions, I realized I needed something that would make up for my gaps in understanding since techniques without a deep understanding will only get you so far. I think I also got tired of LR since I'd been focusing on that exclusively for 2-3 months. I'm happy I did things this way because it helped me with the other sections tremendously. However, I needed to switch things up, including my approach to studying. I needed a fresh perspective and to revisit the basics. Needless to say the chapters I've read thus far in LH have helped me with comprehension, discerning what is important vs unimportant in a stimulus, understanding sufficient/necessary and contrapositives, and as I mentioned, the camo-review technique is so cool! It's a real time and energy saver.

It comes down to your learning type. I'm the type of learner who needs to know why-always, which is why I needed to use different materials to explain concepts differently. As LH explains, the LSAT is all about understanding what's important, THEN applying techniques to those important variables. You can't have one without the other. Either way you slice it, just try to be sure you tackle both of those components and maybe focus on one at a time. Sounds like LH would be a good place to start since she breaks down what is important and how to read stimuli. That will come in handy with all of the sections.s

With that said, the way some people explained one thing often didn't account for something else crucial to understanding the concept as a whole. With each material, program, tutor, etc, I've gotten puzzle pieces; some lessons cover majority of a given concept, others help me to understand really small but extremely important details of that given concept.

After a while, I was able to breeze through some chapters and drills because I understood the lessons already, but really hone in on others that helped me see something from a different point of view.

I hope this helps

-C

I recently discovered the LR Loopholes book and it discusses this at length. I HIGHLY recommend it. People who read it usually say they end up with a -1 or -2 on LR. I've only been reading it for a few days but it is very helpful. I had a similar issue and I thought it was due to my attention span or stress happening in my life, which could contribute, but after reading the first 3 chapters of the book, I realize that it's the test. The first chapter talks about chunking for sentences, then the book goes into how to identify what's important and unimportant. Later, it discusses how to ensure you are comprehending what you read and offers a few drills. She talks about skipping and knowing what to look for in a stimulus. Please consider taking a look at it. There isn't enough space here to go over 3 chapters of a book but it can be really helpful to this in particular.