How to recapture basic instincts

jb_tucker

Hi all,

When I started prepping a month ago, I was scoring quite highly, not far off where I wanted to be. After a month of intense study--reading the PowerScore books, using resources here, and doing the Blind Review method--I'm finding that while I know more about the patterns in LSAT questions, my basic instincts regarding the rightness and wrongness of individual answer choices seem to be dulled. I tend now to overthink my choices--quickly dismissing ones that feel intuitive because they seem too obvious. But, my intuition was all I had when I was taking tests the first few times (and scoring much better), Now I'm in a slump and don't feel the same intuition I had before. Has anyone had this problem? Will it improve with time? I'm shooting for the October LSAT, or November if I need.

Thanks

brendanhyatt2

this is real. This is a pretty common phenomenon among high scorers, I think - it's good to keep in mind that about ~half the questions are supposed to be reasonably easy to get in order to maintain the curve around 150. I took a week-long break from any studying to regain some common sense and exit LSAT mode.

dylanross353-1

I've had this problem. I think the enemy is overthinking. The strategy of the test is important, but always rely on your instincts first and foremost. Strategies should be implemented through habit; you don't ever think about them, except when you're developing the habits. The rest is your natural thinking, plus practice and experience. If you have to, go into every question assuming it will be simple, and give it a shot, because most of them are. Don't be afraid to take a deep breath, or if you have a chance, take a break.

Jonathan Wang

You shouldn't be looking to 'recapture' the initial state of those instincts so much as you should be looking to learn how to explicitly justify the logical underpinnings of those instincts. I wrote a piece analogizing this to touch typing years ago, which I think is still in the sage advice section if you want to read it. Learning the way things work only interferes with your instincts if your initial instincts weren't actually solidly rooted in anything to begin with (which is precisely what we're trying to fix by teaching the fundamentals). I think this is intuitively true - after all, if you already actually knew how something worked, why would someone explicitly explaining it to you interfere with that understanding? There's only a problem if there's a clash or an inconsistency, which there shouldn't be if you understood it right to begin with. The only conclusion to draw is that you didn't understand it right to begin with; in turn, that throws into question your ability to replicate the correct thought process consistently and accurately.

You're seeking the next level of depth in your understanding, which will require you to challenge your current modes of thought and learn to pick out times where they're good and times where they're not. This is why you're in a slump - you haven't gotten good yet at differentiating good thought processes from bad. Regardless, the solution isn't to unwind and go back to your initial state, but rather should be to merge the two threads. When your instinct becomes properly rooted in your skillset, you will be able to actually back up your thought processes. It becomes your new intuition, which you can trust because worst case, you can press yourself and justify it properly with a solid logical backing, not just your hunches. After all, the section is called logical reasoning, not intuitive feeling.