PT Scoring Affecting Life

ethaaaan

I've observed that my performance on a PT will affect my overall daily mood; if I have a good PT I'm ecstatic and have a sense of accomplishment, but if I score poorly it can throw a wrench in my entire week. Overall I'm very happy with the progress I've made, with a couple months left until test day I'm averaging my goal score, with time to still make improvements that should mitigate test-day anxiety, but I can't help but get bogged down by a single test or even a single section.

Today I PT'd the lowest I have in over a month, but only because my entire score was killed by a LG section with 3/4 games being In/Out, my biggest weakness. Even though I had my best LR section performance on the same PT, I feel like I've accomplished nothing. Contrasted with last week, when I scored my highest ever, I felt like I was on top of the world ready to take the June test by the horns.

I'm sure this is an issue that a lot of people here deal with, and I would be interested to hear how other's have dealt with this issue.

Cant Get Right

So, I guess I’d have to ask, why are you weak on in/out games if you’ve been able to identify that as a weakness? Knowing your weaknesses is huge. If a PT exposes them, that’s a good thing. Sure, it sucks psychologically, but are you taking PTs for psychological validation or to learn so that you can push your real score as high as you can push it? And I don’t mean that rhetorically. Prepping for my first two attempts on the LSAT, it is very clear to me now that I was taking PTs for psychological validation. I didn’t learn a thing from them. You have learned something from them though. You’ve learned you’re weak at in/out games. So the way you deal with a bad PT is to strengthen the weaknesses it exposes. Make in/out games your bitch. And the next time you see one and you destroy it, believe me, you’ll feel better.

Nicole Hopkins

@"Cant Get Right" said:
Knowing your weaknesses is huge. If a PT exposes them, that’s a good thing.

For real!

OP—I been there. It sounds like you might consider taking a break. I found that whenever I got too emotionally attached to PT performance, for better or for worse, that I was probably in the early stages of burnout and therefore a break was in order.

GordonBombay

I think most people who study for the LSAT long enough will experience similar feelings to what you are describing. I know I did. It's easier said than done, but you can't let yourself get bent out of shape about a rough PT. Progress/improvement is never linear. I recall a month or so before I took the Dec. LSAT I scored one of my better exams (165), and also had a melt down on one and scored a 158. Like I said this was within the same month (after 6 months of prep).

So to answer your question on how I dealt with this, all I did was keep on plowing ahead (on my normal PT schedule with scheduled days off for rest). I know this probably sounds cliche, but when faced with adversity like a disappointing PT all you can really do is keep working. I think Einstein said somewhere that adversity introduces a man to himself. I always keep that quote in mind when I hit rough patches in my life. Hope that helps a little.

ethaaaan

@"Cant Get Right" I think I've been getting out of the mindset of taking PTs for validation since starting 7sage and the BR method. With that said, this is the first PT where I've confronted this many In/Out games (if theres only 1 i/o in a section I could get by with only missing 1 or 2 on that game, but if there's 3 i/o in one section then I miss 6). So up until now I've been able to still score well in a section by just allocating more time to those types of games. I didn't do the 7sage curriculum for LG, so I'm going to take a look at the lessons for I/O games to hopefully bridge some gaps. Thanks!

@"Nicole Hopkins" Thanks for your response! I've been trying to deemphasize the amount of stress and time I put into my LSAT prep in general, and so far I've seen improvement. For a while I was doing 2-3 PTs a week, with little improvement, so I took a month off and have now been PTing once a week on Friday with much more improvement. I have a big exam coming up this week and an event next weekend, so now seems like the perfect time to take a week off! Thanks again.

@GordonBombay Thank you for sharing your experience, I think that it's inevitable that most people get caught up in the numbers during the process. I appreciate you including the quote, I'm going to try to track down that quote and keep it in my backpack as a reminder. I was actually hoping that someone would include some quotes that they turned to in these situations, so thank you!

GordonBombay

@ethan.ames You're welcome man, I'm rooting for you.

MrSamIam

Start drilling the in-out games. Also note that 3/4 games being in-out is somewhat of a rarity...
Don't let one or two bad scores bring you down. I'm willing to bet that for everyone one bad score, you have AT LEAST two good, if not great scores.

runiggyrun

@ethan.ames said:
I didn't do the 7sage curriculum for LG, so I'm going to take a look at the lessons for I/O games to hopefully bridge some gaps. Thanks!

7Sage's in/out approach is the best of all I've seen, and I've tried at least 5. It takes a lot of practice to internalize and automate it, but once you do, in/out games are nothing!

Cant Get Right

Agreed @runiggyrun . I used to dread turning the page and seeing an in/out game. Since going through the curriculum, the more the better. Free points!