No motivation?

maelarpeni

Hey guys!
I'm new to this so bear with me please. I'm taking the September LSAT and I have no motivation to study. I know how serious it is and how important it is to do well, but I can't seem to get out of this rut. I take a class that meets twice a week and I love going; but when I'm not in the class, it's not the same for me.

Maybe I'm the type of person who needs to study with a buddy. I'm curious to hear if any of you ever dealt with something similar? Please let me know

dennisgerrard

are u still an undergraduate？ I think about the goal when I lose the motivation. Why I go to law school? What happens if I went to law school？

I suggest you take a diagnostic test and see how brutal the test is. Then you can decide if you want join 7 sage class.Talking about the study buddy, you could find one on 7sage. But at last,study LSAT is a long journey alone.

maelarpeni

Yes, I'm still an undergraduate! How do I go about finding a study buddy through this?

Alex

@maelarpeni I will be your study buddy We may be at different stages in our prep (I started a couple months back), but I will gladly help you in any way I can. Especially in the motivation department, lol.

There is also a study buddy locator on the main page where you login. This uses your location to see if there are other local peeps who are looking for study buddies.

Right now I have a small group of people who I am study buddies with. We all keep each other motivated, talk about progress, problems, and overall hold each other accountable. It is pretty sweet! Technology makes keeping in touch easy.

I also think @dennisgerrard is so right in keeping in mind why you are doing this. When I feel myself losing motivation, I first take a break and make sure it isn't burn out. I also have a stupid Harvard Law School shirt I bought offline and I wear it. I know it sounds so stupid, but I imagine how it would feel to actually earn a spot at the law school of my dreams. I think of how different my life will be and how good a feeling it will be knowing it was all worth it.

I also found writing a draft of my personal statement, which talks about why I want to go to law school, This really helped me remember why I am doing this. Every few days I re-read it to get motivated.

Matthew524

@maelarpeni Where are you from and what year are you in at your college? If you are early in your college career I don't advise you rushing the LSAT. I did that, I started my sophomore year and suffered burnout rather quickly and found that like you I didn't have that much motivation. Currently I will be a senior in the coming fall semester and what gives me the motivation is the fact I worked with many attorneys over the years and realized being a lawyer is my calling and I really enjoyed the work.

maelarpeni

I'm from LA but I go to school in Boston!

Matthew524

What year are you in?

maelarpeni

@matthew524 I'm going into my senior year this fall!

rakinalikhan

im in the exact same situation as you. PLUS THE DAMN LSAT IS ON MY FUCKING BIRTHDAY. ugh.

Matthew524

@maelarpeni @rakinalikhan since we are all in the same boat wanna study together and make this journey a little bit more bearable?

Matthew524

I sent both of ya invites if you guys are interested

Kateryna

i am 64% into my curriculum and really loosing motivation. i am just tired of it, and it feels like i just want to have my life back. hate this feeling and trying not t give up, but the struggle is real

Alex

@Kateryna Sounds like burnout. I'd recommend taking a few days or a week to yourself to do whatever you want. That is exactly how I felt during July 4th weekend when everyone on here basically told me I was experiencing burn out.

mike2533

@Matthew524 I would also be interested in joining! @maelarpeni I'm in Boston too! I think there was a 7Sage study group that was formed in Boston not too long ago which I was considering joining...check this thread out:
https://7sage.com/forums/discussion/7949/

Kateryna

@"Alex Divine" thank you for your comment. i did slow down a bit last days, just trying to hang out with my family and appreciate last days with them before coming back to USA. i feel what bothers me the most is that I came to visit them and instead of enjoying things, I kept being anxious about LSAT. its tough for me to be able to tell myself its okay if i postpone. i feel like postponing means failing.

Kristen B

I have been in this very situation as well, and as many people have mentioned, I found that having a study buddy helps sooooo much! That way you have someone to hold you accountable, and motivate you on those tough days where lsat crap is the last thing you want to look at.

Alex

@"Kristen B" said:
That way you have someone to hold you accountable, and motivate you on those tough days where lsat crap is the last thing you want to look at.

Yes! Exactly!

rakinalikhan

i just added you @Matthew524 . lets set up something soon

Alex

@Kateryna said:
its tough for me to be able to tell myself its okay if i postpone. i feel like postponing means failing.

I went through this same exact thing when I decided to postpone a couple weeks ago. It was such a hard thing to do because I think my self worth was too tied up in this test and law school. However, I got this thinking and realized that I KNOW I can get a 170. I just don't know how long that may take. And that is OK. I also came to the realization that even if it takes 2 years to get a 170+, it will be worth it in the long run. Remember, Barack Obama didn't start Harvard until he was 27.

Kateryna

@"Alex Divine" good reminder about Obama! i need to remember it every time i feel like this again. how long since u have started studying? what is your improvement so far?

Kristen B

@"Alex Divine" said:
Remember, Barack Obama didn't start Harvard until he was 27.

Ahhh, great motivation.

Alex

@"Kristen B" @Kateryna Doesn't that just make you feel so much better? He was probably studying for the LSAT for a while as well!

@Kateryna I started studying in June. I wasted the first month looking for secrets to crack the LSAT. I book the Powerscore Trilogy, Manhattan Prep Trilogy, The LSAT Trainer, and several other supplemental books. The LSAT Trainer is very helpful though, so I think that is where some of my improvement may have come from. I didn't finish it because I started 7Sage, but I plan to do the 16 Week Schedule eventually.

My first timed Diagnostic taken June 7th, 2016 and was a 151. My improvement has been pretty amazing actually. 7Sage helped me begin to absolutely kill Logic games! 6 weeks ago I felt like I was doomed because of the games. I think I missed 18 LG questions on my diagnostic. I read through The LG Bible and was still sucking with time and confidence. Because of 7Sage's fool-proof guide to perfection on LG, I am missing like 4-5 questions per timed section. it took a lot of work and I only did LG for like 3 weeks. But it was so worth it. I now look forward to a -0 on test day.

LR/RC are places of great inconsistency for me. So I know I need a lot of work in these areas. I've seen some really great improvement in LR. It is hard to quantify because I haven't really done much timed, but the last timed section I did, I missed like 4. So there is unquestionable improvement. I think being consistent is going to be the battle for me. The good news is that the questions I have done in the CC are the ones I am doing best on. Most strongly supported used to kill me, now I seem to be getting most of them right.

So the improvements will come, but they do take some time.

I will say that postponing was the best decision I ever made for my law school future. There would be no way I could be scoring in the 170s confidently by September or December. And the worst part is when I was planning to take the LSAT this cycle, I was finding myself having to skip lessons and listen as like 1.4x speed to be certain I would finish. And now that I have been able to go back and do the lessons throughly, I am realizing I missed a lot of important things.

Cant Get Right

Yeah, motivation stuff is hard. Quite frequently, people will start out highly energized and motivated and then struggle as that wanes. Many people study for well over a year, so it’s understandably difficult to manage over that length of time. You've got to find your groove if you’re going to make this happen.

So what are your goals? What’s your dream school? What’s your dream job? That’s what should excite you. You’re not going to law school on a whim, you are setting out to accomplish something!

Much like Frodo set out to destroy the One Ring.

Yep. I’m doing it. Lord of the Rings metaphor. Deal with it.

Frodo was motivated to do one thing and one thing only. Destroy the One Ring. But did he just stroll into Mordor and cast it back into the fiery chasm from whence it came? Nope. First, he had to get to The Prancing Pony. (Okay, okay, I know what you’re all thinking. No, Frodo didn’t know he’d have to go beyond Bree at this point. The Fellowship hadn’t been formed yet, and The Council of Elrond hadn't even been assembled. So he really didn’t have any greater motivation at this point than to get himself to the Inn. So yeah, technically at this point, destroying the ring wasn’t his actual motivation. But that’s missing the point man. Frodo wasn’t made the Ring Bearer at the Council of Elrond, he always was the Ring Bearer. He just didn’t know it until then. It was always his task though, his own, and he was the only one who could have fulfilled it. Even though he couldn't have known exactly where the road to Bree would end, he was headed to Mordor the moment he left Bag End.) And before we can reach our own Mount Dooms, we’ve all got to get to Bree first. If we don't first get to Bree, we never cross The Bridge of Khazad Dum, we don't sneak past Minas Morgul, we don't get across the Gorgoroch Plateau, and we don't destroy the One Ring.

The LSAT is only Bree, and it's hard to get excited about Bree. The hobbits there are super weird and there's humans, what's even going on? And what the hell is Aragorn doing there in the first place? My point is, it's not a place anyone really wants to go to. It's certainly not where we will accomplish the thing we've really set out to do. But unless we make it there, we can never accomplish the rest of our goals. As it turns out, it's not so easy to get to Bree. It takes a lot of hard work and motivation. There's Nazgûl out there! So to make it, you've got to approach the LSAT with the same passion and motivation you feel for whatever your version of destroying the One Ring is. Because if you don't defeat the LSAT, you'll never make it to Mordor.

LSATisland

@maelarpeni

Although it's better to enjoy prepping for the LSAT and come to see the test as "fun in a way," it's normal to feel lack of motivation, especially at the beginning when everything is unfamiliar.

It helped me to think about how prepping for the LSAT made my logical thinking sharper. The particular techniques are not immediately applicable in law school in a direct way, but the general improvement in logical thinking is definitely applicable in law school and in life generally. Besides for logical thinking, I also got excited (even if a little artificially so at the beginning) to read RC and learn about a variety of topics that I might not normally read about, and to read about these topics from a passage that is generally academically satisfying and purposeful.

Besides for LSAT-specific motivation, the underlying drive for prepping is to go to law school and have a legal career. For this, you will likely find the best motivation from within, in your own reasons for seeking law, than from others. Others' reasons might resonate with your own, but you should upon reflection find yourself driven by your own internal and self-affirming goals.