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Work Study Balance
I currently have a job that I come home from exhausted and brain fried six days a week. I'm so tired when I get home that it feels nearly impossible to do anything productive. For those of you working, how have you found a balance between your job and studying nights and weekends?
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Hi sberg2014,
It has been really hard for me to work a full day, and then go home and study for a few hours. I have every intention of studying, until I go home and the bed feels extra comfortable.
I tried it, didn't work out as planned. I'm planning to take off a few months to study full time for the December 2018 exam.
My advice is to, if you can afford it, take time off and dedicate your time solely to the LSAT.
HOWEVER, I am sure there are go-getters out there that work a 12 hour day, come home and study for a few hours. I applaud them; I cannot do that.
Hey sberg2014,
It's absolutely exhausting to work 40 hours a week (and maybe more for others) and then come home and study. However, I have found that I am extra efficient with my time, since there is such a time crunch (testing in June), that I can only devote myself to one other thing, the LSAT. I have also found that if I study at my office, I am much more likely to not want to crawl into bed and pass out.
My typical study schedule during the work week involves coming in an hour before work to study, and review parts of the core curriculum where my foundation is a bit shaky. Then during my lunch break hour, I take a timed section and blind review. Then in the evening, I stay an additional hour after work to go over questions I missed even after BR. If in the rare occasion there are no questions to review, then I go over games that have given me a hard time or go back to the CC and review more material.
On weekends I go the library and take a practice test on Saturday and BR, then do post BR review that evening. And then do same exact thing on Sunday. However on weekend evenings I take a bubble bath and self care to the max and watch some TV and order in.
As you can see, I have literally no life, but I do think it will be worth it.
It's definitely not easy to do, and everyone's work situation is different. My work is somewhat mentally taxing but not overly so. But it's enough that I can only do about 2 hours of studying in the evening, max. And despite the fact that I'm a total insomniac night owl, there seems to be a hard cut off in my brain at 10pm. Everything gets blurry and stops making sense haha. So if I start studying at 9, I'd only get in an hour.
My typical schedule looked like:
In to work at 9am
On lunch break, walk to library and do 1 timed section, walk back to work.
Leave work at 6pm.
6:30-7:30ish eat dinner, watch a little TV to relax.
7:30ish to 9:30-10pm studying
At least 1 evening per week, I'd take it completely off and make sure to see friends, go to a movie, anything relaxing and fun that would get my mind off things and feels refreshing.
Saturdays I'd take a PT and maybe start the BR, but that's it. Rest of the day relaxing.
Sundays I'd finish the BR, take the rest of the day off.
Rinse, repeat.
I personally tried studying in the morning, but being the polar opposite of a morning person, it just didn't work for me very well. Maybe you could try that approach? I've seen people say they got up at 5am to study before work. If you're too tired at the end of the day to study, maybe try doing it in the morning? Lunch breaks also can be used for something small, like a LG or 2 or a timed section.
I've seen others that commute by public trans also use that time for studying. It's really tough and I think takes us working folk longer to study because of the time issue (those who work and have kids are my heroes, no idea how y'all do it) but bit by bit, it can be done!
If anything, you should do your best to study before you go to work. You want your brain as fresh as possible when you study, regardless of what you study.
Oh I also at some point came to the realization that I did not have the physical and mental capacity to work a full day, study, and cook. I gave up and took the stress off myself in what little ways I could, which ended up being a lot of microwave meals (Trader Joe's has a lot of relatively healthy ones, not eating entirely hungry man meals or whatever lol). House cleaning went completely by the way side, it was a mess and dirty and I just dealt with it haha. But us humans only have limited capacity and I cut out the things that weren't 100% necessary. Can't say that I was particularly healthy or my life was in order, but got the LSAT score I wanted so things work themselves out haha.