Confidence in Games?

Frostbyte

Hi All,

I was wondering if anyone had any tips on improving confidence in LG?

I took the December LSAT and got two LGs. In BOTH, I misread a rule in sequencing games, realized my mistake while doing a later game, and redid the whole game (and bombed the section in general as a result). I usually go -0 to -3 in LG. In the December take, I went -10. I'm not sure if the reason for this was test day pressure, lack of skill, or the fact that I had done so many games in the past, I generally started getting brain fog during the games.

Since then, while doing LG, I have been reading and re-reading every rule in every game because I have a nagging fear it will happen again. The trouble is that this has slowed me down a lot---to the point that I can't finish sections in time. I can't help but think that this isn't the right way to deal with this problem.. Any thoughts?

BinghamtonDave

I've invested a considerable amount of time into games. Although I did not take a diagnostic, when I first started LSAT prep I could only answer 1 question correctly untimed (the standard acceptable situation question) out of the entire set. It think it is safe to say that if I had taken a diagnostic, I would have gotten -20 or -21. As an aside, I think if one were to set up a study in which a cat retrieved a treat from one of 5 bowls marked A-E and then marked that letter on the answer sheet, I'm confident that a cat would have done better than me when I started lol!

With that being said, 13 months later, +1200 games, 2 timed sections per day, I can tell what went wrong here for you with a pretty high degree of confidence. Almost everything that can go wrong in the games sections, has gone wrong for me throughout my learning process: from misreading a rule, to misbubbling to forgetting a piece. I've translated the word "before" in the rule set to "after" in my visual representation, I've read "neither" as "either" which in grouping games sets one on a course to get almost all the questions wrong.

I think the answer to your question about the worrying about misreading something that is now causing your timing to suffer is twofold: 1.You've got to rebuild your confidence in your approach to games. Rebuild by practice, rebuild by fool proofing, rebuild by keeping a notebook of mistakes you do make that you review for 3-5 minute per day and remember not to make those mistakes again. I've had to do this a dozen times over.

2.Assimilate a practiced and efficient check of how you have translated the rules vs. how the rules are presented to us in the setup. This check takes me between 7-10 seconds. I work from the bottom rule up to the top rule, checking that I have them written correctly. The reason for this is I once had a professor that made us edit the grammar of our papers by reading the last sentence first and reading the whole paper backwards: that way our minds didn't read what we "knew" what we were saying, but what was actually written on the paper. This process of isolating what we are being told vs. what we have written might seem a bit awkward, but it has worked for me! Others might disagree, but I always check that I have written things correctly. The goal for me in this quick check is to trust that the LSAT isn't going to get something by me twice. Building towards that in an efficient way might be helpful moving forward. I have not made a mistake in translating a rule since October.


I hope this helps.
-David

Frostbyte

Thank you so much for the advice, @BinghamtonDave! I think you're spot on about the notebook and the check at the end! I generally skimp on foolproofing because I find it expensive and time consuming to reprint everything. Do you print or use another method? (I have PDFs)

BinghamtonDave

I actually print everything. Double sided. It stinks but I have kept every game I have ever done. I'm going to recycle them all at once. I actually invested in a $49 printer that I use for LSAT related prints. I print and do games. On Wednesdays I do 5 hours of games.

stgl1230

I printed everything, too (also double sided). Definitely time consuming, but absolutely worth it.

Frostbyte

Thanks for your responses, guys! I can't buy a printer I bought transparency films from Amazon. Going to tape them together on the bottom and sides and insert LG pages. Will see how that goes.

I adopted the bottom up approach and it's helping my confidence already! I'm all ears if you have more comments!

BinghamtonDave

@Frostbyte keep us posted!