I locked up during my PT and stopped....I don't know what to do

TexAgAaron

I'm really feeling down. I've never locked up like this. I was in the 2nd section, and my mind went nuts. I had RC as the first section and that didn't go very well, so I was already not feeling great and then my mind seemed to go in a thousand directions all the sudden. I recognized nothing in the question stems or stimuluses. I've taken PT's before and never had this happened. I was really looking forward to this and thought I made some strides recently.

I don't know what to do. Timed sections maybe? I feel horrible about myself.

LastLSAT

It is just one PT. You will likely be taking dozens more before the real thing—don't sweat it! Everyone has good days and bad days during their prep. Today may not have been your best day, but another one in the future will be, as long as you keep up the hard work!

The best thing you can do after freezing up is just to take some time to analyze why it happened, and then see it as an opportunity to learn from your mistakes.

Perhaps you should have utilized a better skipping strategy to gain confidence and time on the easy questions so you can return to the ones that were stumping you at the end? Perhaps you were just burnt out and needed a break? Perhaps the subject matter was just not your thing and you need to do some extra-curricular reading so you're comfortable with it next time?

Only you can analyze why you froze up. But just realize that if you never made these mistakes during your practice tests, you wouldn't be ready to confront the real thing with confidence and a positive attitude. Mistakes during PTs are just an opportunity to learn and improve for the next PT, and then the eventual real LSAT! You've got this.

Alex

Hey @akeegs92,

First and foremost, don't feel bad over a practice test. It is, in fact, just for practice, so it really doesn't matter at all in the scheme of things. That strong emotional attachment to your PTs may be part of why you locked up. Naturally, when this happens it sucks and it going to feel bad, but the important thing is to come away with some wisdom.

I've had similar situations where I felt like I bombed a section, and as a result subsequent sections became much harder to complete. It's actually a skill I consider important to cultivate should a situation like this occur on test day. There have been a few times I've been taking a full PT, felt like I bombed a section of LG or RC, and had to leave that in the past and move onto the next section with a clear mind.

I think next time you should practice pushing through. Don't let fear of a bad PT score that doesn't matter anyway prevent you from getting the practice you need. You want to be prepared for any situation that might come up on test day. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon one.

Do the rest of the PT as timed section + BR them.

Going forward examine your though process and what led you to feeling so locked up. Is RC a big weakness of yours? Was it just a single bad section? A particular type of passage through you off?

TexAgAaron

Thanks for the support @BagelBiter @"Alex Divine". You both are right. It's just a PT. I guess I just had really high hopes for myself and was really excited, then just got completely unnerved from RC.

What has helped y'all keep composer and focus? I struggle under time to keep my mind calm. I was skipping every other word it seemed when I was reading.

TexAgAaron

I will add that this is my first PT in 5 months. That is why I was really excited to do this PT.

Sami

@akeegs92 said:
I'm really feeling down. I've never locked up like this. I was in the 2nd section, and my mind went nuts. I had RC as the first section and that didn't go very well, so I was already not feeling great and then my mind seemed to go in a thousand directions all the sudden. I recognized nothing in the question stems or stimuluses. I've taken PT's before and never had this happened. I was really looking forward to this and thought I made some strides recently.

I don't know what to do. Timed sections maybe? I feel horrible about myself.

A lot of time we feel if a section goes bad we are going to get a bad score. This makes us freeze and lose hope. Instead of feeling bad I think a good take away is to learn from experiences like these. The three people I admire the most in LSAT @"Daniel.Sieradzki", @"Cant Get Right" and JY both encountered on their real take similar scenarios where they felt bad about a section. But each of them knew that one section did not have the power to determine their score. JY splashed his face with water during his 15 min break and gave himself a pep talk about how he still had fifty percent of test left to do and so he can still get those points. Josh held it together and pushed what happened in that section in the back of his mind and focused on taking the rest of his PT with good form. The result was that they both scored in 170's.

Another example, I blew both LR sections on my real take and still scored a 169. One thing I have learned through experience is that I can drop a section/freak out and can still score high. You can even have two horrible sections and still pull through. But that knowledge only comes if through a lot of practice tests where we do have these instances where we freeze up and where mishaps occur that we end up realizing a bad section actually doesn't weigh as heavily on the score as we think it does.

Also, we have a tendency to magnify how bad we did vs what actually happened. Feelings are not a good indicator of how we did on a section. The only thing I have learned to rely on is having a good form. If I executed a section with good form then that's the best I could have done in that section under time. If I need to improve my understanding I'll do that in blind review. If I did not execute a section with good form, I'll keep this in mind and do the next section with good form. The points are still on the table and I can still score high. True, we are no longer going to score a 180 or a super high 170. But the rest of the points are still on the table and its completely okay to miss more questions on other sections and still end up scoring in 170s.

So the next time this happens, even if you don't completely believe me that you did not blew a PT, just trust me and continue taking the rest of the sections and try focusing only on one section at a time. Seeing yourself freeze and do bad on sections in PT and still score well is an invaluable lesson that can help on the real take if for some reason it does end up happening to you. Plus, its a good practice to not let our feelings about the test determine how we take the test.

Alex

@akeegs92 said:
Thanks for the support @BagelBiter @"Alex Divine". You both are right. It's just a PT. I guess I just had really high hopes for myself and was really excited, then just got completely unnerved from RC.

> What has helped y'all keep composer and focus? I struggle under time to keep my mind calm. I was skipping every other word it seemed when I was reading.

Perspective is key. Sometimes, you just remind yourself that it's just a practice---key word "practice"-- test that has no bearing on your actual life. PTs are nothing more than a way to diagnose some weaknesses so that you can create some targeted study sessions. I've also forced myself to have little emotional attachment to my PT scores, so that helps me to avoid becoming unnerved if something goes wrong during one of them.

I've taught myself to embrace when things go bad on PTs. For a long time I was getting lucky, and it wasn't until things started to go wrong during my PTs that I was able to cultivate some solid data to use to get better.

Lastly, I train myself to take the test on somewhat of an autopilot mode. I think one of the worst things you can do during the test is meta-evaluate yourself on your (perceived) performance in the moment. I don't think anything good can come from it, thus, it's something you should avoid. Instead, just use all your focus and brainpower to getting as many points as you can. Trust that your strategies and the hundreds of hours of practice you've done will carry you. I'm a believer that if you prep correctly, they will!

TexAgAaron

@Sami thank you! That is absolute gold. This is definitely a learning experience for myself. I definitely will try to push through. The fear really gripped me more than I should have let it.

@"Alex Divine" Thank you for the suggestions. I agree with letting go of the pressure. I've put a lot of weight on this PT since its my first in a while, but what you said is true. It's just practice!