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Speed + Panic: A Love Story
Cant Get Right
Yearly + Live Member Sage ⭐ 🍌 7Sage Tutor
I've just had an apostrophe, and it's about time too. I think it's something a lot of people probably deal with, so I thought I'd share in the hopes that maybe someone else can benefit from my many months of error.
Time is a huge shadow hanging over the LSAT. No matter how much we know, none of it matters much if we can't apply it with speed. So over the course of my studies, I have been in an epic struggle against time, fighting it with every tool at my disposal. As is good and right. However, I've realized that I was in a race down the stairs, and I was jumping off the landing when I should have just been quickly and calmly descending the stairs.
I discovered this by taking an LR section with a stopwatch instead of a timer. I wanted to find what I'm calling my "natural speed"- not a BR, but not time restricted either. How far away from my goal of a comfortable 30 minute LR section am I? So, I moved quickly and calmly, finished the section, and stopped the clock at 32:30. I couldn't believe it. That's my average speed under timed conditions. Inconceivable.
This result obviously called for some reflection. What does it all mean?
And what it means is this: I had no idea what speed meant. I thought I was "going fast" but all I was doing was "panicking." Speed is not attained by moving ever faster and faster. It's earned by mastering the fundamentals. If I'm having time issues, it doesn't mean I need to go faster, it means I've got to go back to core. If I'm spending six minutes on a complex parallel question, it doesn't mean I need to "go faster," it means I need to go back to the lessons so I can translate the question and answers into lawgic more fluidly. That's the nature of speed on the LSAT.
I hope this resonates with/helps out some others. Mostly because if it's just me then I look like kinda an idiot. But also because if you're like me and feel that underlying sense of haste and panic, maybe this will help you put your finger on the problem and to ultimately overcome it.
Time is a huge shadow hanging over the LSAT. No matter how much we know, none of it matters much if we can't apply it with speed. So over the course of my studies, I have been in an epic struggle against time, fighting it with every tool at my disposal. As is good and right. However, I've realized that I was in a race down the stairs, and I was jumping off the landing when I should have just been quickly and calmly descending the stairs.
I discovered this by taking an LR section with a stopwatch instead of a timer. I wanted to find what I'm calling my "natural speed"- not a BR, but not time restricted either. How far away from my goal of a comfortable 30 minute LR section am I? So, I moved quickly and calmly, finished the section, and stopped the clock at 32:30. I couldn't believe it. That's my average speed under timed conditions. Inconceivable.
This result obviously called for some reflection. What does it all mean?
And what it means is this: I had no idea what speed meant. I thought I was "going fast" but all I was doing was "panicking." Speed is not attained by moving ever faster and faster. It's earned by mastering the fundamentals. If I'm having time issues, it doesn't mean I need to go faster, it means I've got to go back to core. If I'm spending six minutes on a complex parallel question, it doesn't mean I need to "go faster," it means I need to go back to the lessons so I can translate the question and answers into lawgic more fluidly. That's the nature of speed on the LSAT.
I hope this resonates with/helps out some others. Mostly because if it's just me then I look like kinda an idiot. But also because if you're like me and feel that underlying sense of haste and panic, maybe this will help you put your finger on the problem and to ultimately overcome it.
Comments
The more we admit how little we know and be open to new ideas, and even revisiting old once the more proficient we will become on the test. It ironically, it just takes time...
I'm guessing you meant epiphany... Any-who, thank you for the post @"Can't Get Right" Time feels like my biggest issue at the moment. Would you recommend simply timing oneself, without paying attention to the time, to get a baseline?
Yeah, so my excercise was to find my "natural speed." So instead of taking it under timed conditions and manipulating my pace to the time, I tried to reverse engineer it and think about how much time my pace took. So, I went at what I felt like was the best pace I could manage without losing too much accuracy- quick yet calm. Not a BR, I didn't allow myself to linger too long when I got hung up on a parallel flaw question, I did the best I could and moved on. In BR I realized I'd missed that one, actually. Think of it as a pace diagnostic. If you try it out, let us know how it goes.
...I suck.
When I attempted the exercise I did feel calm and pretty well collected I think. Although, I did take an ECON exam earlier this morning. I recently went to the optometrist, needed a new prescription but nothing drastically changed, just mild myopia.
As far as dyslexia, I guess I could get that checked out. My UG GPA is 3.86 so I never really felt like I had a learning disability. I'm actually in the top 10% of my class at a tier 1 university, honors society, student government, internship at the state capitol, all of which went well I would say and never led me to think I had some type of mental health issue. I guess it could have flown under the radar, though. Is being dyslexic where the words jump around on the page? Could it be anxiety related? I do have a tendency to panic and freak-out when stressed.
I have only been doing 7Sage for 2 weeks and am 1/4 the way through the CC, so I am just barely scratching the surface with the memory method. I have taken 5 PT's prior to enrolling, all in the 140s. Perhaps my prep beforehand was really crappy as I was only using the PS bible trilogy. I have consistently spent 30+ hours per week studying solely for the LSAT.
My LR is sporadic. Some days, I do extremely well. Others, I feel like grasp what is going on... I am generally bad at weaken and flaw questions, along with the lawgic heavy SA types.
I cannot say or identify a specific issue I am having, but, I can't help but feel like I should be doing a lot better than when I first started.
Please take the time to really understand the concepts and not focus on performance. The adage of "One step forward, two steps back" during core curriculum study is one of the hardest of realities to recognize especially for people with high expectations. Me too:)
So many people say that the LSAT is a skills test and the more time that I have devoted to those types of weaknesses: re-doing the lessons, drilling, etc, the more comfortable I am and finally seeing the reward and agree with their assessment. We all have different strengths and weaknesses where we have to devote (at least for me) an extraordinary amount of time to conquer different aspects of the test.
When building your fundamentals, I would not recommend being concerned with timing strategy/PT test taking strategy.
Relax, do not panic which is exactly what @Can't Get Right's post is all about. Learning how to instinctively trust your knowledge will allow you to alleviate an incredible amount of test anxiety. Great advice for strategy that many of us have embraced:)
I have started to read the economist on a regular basis. I actually enjoy it, I am an ECON major and generally find most non-fiction interesting. I do think the CC is helping, too. The MSS/MBT/MBF lessons have been really helpful, and I generally don't miss any practice questions from the sets on those Q-types. I guess I should recognize the small progress made and try to gradually keep grinding through. It's just frustrating, I tried to devote so much time to this thing and I might need to postpone until October if I really want to be ready.
I guess I need to get over my millennial, I want it now mentality. No easy way to get through this, just got to grind. Again, thanks for the motivation.
Trial and error will help you find what works for you.
I started with a lot of underlining of key things (people, places, dates, etc) and it always caused me to run out of time or rush.
Then I tried a few passages with no underlining at all - just read, stop at the end of the paragraph and summarize in my head (OK, there's going to be something about the objectivists Vs subjectivists; Here's what objectivists think) and so on. That sped things up a lot, but I missed a couple of questions more than usual.
I especially had trouble with questions that ask about opinion in some way, or require you to know how strongly the author feels about something, what does the experimental data support and what it doesn't and so on.
Now I do a hybrid. I do mark down a couple of key players and dates, but I focus most on two things: first things are "opinion/example indicators" like but, although, also, besides, first, second, additionally, others, etc. If there are multiple examples/components/theories, I write on the side 1, 2, 3.
The other things I mark are indicators of certainty or opinion like: key, crucial, unfortunately, suggests, demonstrates, hypothesis(es), likely, unlikely, will, could, should, if etc.
I find these very helpful to answer most of the questions.
If the author says "the scientists demonstrated" is very different from "the scientists hypothesized"
If he says "Implementation of this technique will lead to improvements" is very different from "if this technique is implemented, it could lead to improvements".
There are a lot of ways to skin the mark-up cat, you just have to give a few of them a shot and see what helps YOU most.
Besides that, yeah, engaging with the passage and making yourself believe you're reading something super interesting that you care about.
Annotating can definitely cause you to lose sight of the forest. Play around with different strategies on that. Also, go back and look at the sections you've taken. If you're getting all the tree questions and missing all the forest questions, then there you go. I know my annotation strategy is wildly different than JY's or any prep book. I've developed my own system and it works great for me. I also really like the suggestion of briefly pausing at the end of each paragraph and giving it a quick mental run down. I'm going to add that in to my strategy.
So a follow up on this comment. Just listened to the Pre-Test Proctor Instructions and my proctor DEFINITELY glossed through a few things. So this may not be a real thing you can do after all.
That is a silver bullet of knowledge!
Thank you so much for giving me the heads up - I have never heard of that possible opportunity to at least get a moment to consider the topics. I have been planning to practice filling out the ID part of the scantron prior to starting a PT to more mimic testing conditions and now I can do it with a purpose:)
Do you mind elaborating on this:
If the author says "the scientists demonstrated" is very different from "the scientists hypothesized"
If he says "Implementation of this technique will lead to improvements" is very different from "if this technique is implemented, it could lead to improvements".
What exactly is the difference in meaning between these examples? I do "feel" like there's a shift in meaning between the two when reading them side by side, but I can't seem to put my finger on it. Really appreciate the comments by the way.
In the first pair, hypothesizing and demonstrating are way different. A hypothesis is essentially just an educated guess. So, I hypothesize that kittens are fluffy. I don't know, but I think that is the case. So how do I find out for sure? Well, let's have a demonstration. So to demonstrate the hypothesis that kittens are fluffy, here's a box of kittens. Feel how fluffy they are. Are they fluffy? Yes. Okay, so we just demonstrated that kittens are, as hypothesized, fluffy. In the second pair, the first sentence is an absolute. If this is implemented, it WILL lead to improvements. The second differs because it only COULD lead to improvements. The first statement absolutely will, but in the second, it may or may not.
I actually picked those two because they were key for answering 2 questions in the last few PT's I did.
I missed the first. The paragraph said exactly that "so and so hypothesized that immune cells do something. It's been shown numerous times that lots of types of cells do it". The questions asked which of the following could be inferred from the paragraph, and the correct answer was "so and so didn't actually observe the immune cells doing whatever". I got fooled by remembering that cells had been shown to do it, and missed the part where the scientist in question was just "hypothesizing" about immune cells in particular. I picked another answer that was slightly "off" but I was so certain I had read about those damn cells doing tricks that I fell right in the trap.
Incidentally, the choice of demonstrates/shows vs suggests vs hypothesizes/speculates/claims can give a clue about the authors opinion about the evidence being presented. He probably agrees with the first group, thinks the second group is plausible and thinks the third group has some proofing to do.
For the second, the question went one step further than what @"Can’t Get Right" explained above.
One wrong answer choice went for "implementation will"
Another trickier one went for something like "Because the technology will be implemented, improvements could be expected".
The correct choice was something like "If the technology is implemented improvements can be expected".
Both the "if" and the "could" were key to finding the correct answer.
Quite a few paragraphs end with "if the theory above is correct, then we can expect X". The if WILL show up in a question, and you'll have to somehow differentiate between two answers, one wrong one in which the author appears to fully believe the theory, and one that correctly points out what happens "if" the theory is correct.
My main point was not necessarily about these two particular cases - they might not show up in the next 5 LSATs as such. The point was that LSAT writers never use words randomly, and they are incredibly good at finding words that do exactly what they are supposed to do. They use them like a subtle treasure map to show you the way to the correct answer, and the more you are able to recognize their clues as such, the easier it will be to dismiss wrong answers for not matching the clue. The blind review process is the main tool to achieve that recognition, because the clues are easy to miss under time pressure, especially in the beginning when you're not sure what to look for.