Feeling defeated... third time writing

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• 3 Likes

  nomomnom Member

  August 2021 412 karma

  Is there any reason for this anxiety? I've only taken the LSAT once, but calming down the nerves prior by walking, or meditating before you take the exam helped me out. If noise is the issue, perhaps you can look into doing the exam at a time or location where you won't be disturbed. Alternatively if it's not possible in any way, do the PTs in the same disturbed condition to mirror actual conditions. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly you still have 2 more tries so it's not necessarily the end as long as you keep grinding. Someone on 7sage recommended a book called Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins, and I read it and loved it. Perhaps it can help ya out and re-centre your focus/perspective. Best of luck
• 2 Likes

  lobell79 Alum Member

  August 2021 edited August 2021 146 karma

  @melisssam said:
  Today was my third time writing the lsat. My previous attempts were around 150 so i completely changed up my studying technique. I was consistently scoring 160-165 all on PT before todays exam but my test anxiety was so high and someone in the office next to me was talking loudly so I feel like i bombed my final attempt. I think this may be the end of my journey to law school as I studied full time for four months and had accommodations and still became highly stressed and blanked during the actual exam.... so frustrating.

  Don't know if this will help, but a recent podcast was very useful for reorienting my thinking and strategy. I get your anxiety, and I feel your frustration. If you can, reserve judgement, take a step back, give yourself credit for the work you have done. This is a journey in the truest sense of the word. I found this podcast relevant to some of what I read in your post. Clearly, you are dedicated and determined. Good luck. Report back. This community is here for you.

  https://www.powerscore.com/lsat/podcast/90/
• 11 Likes

  whatsmyname Member

  August 2021 edited August 2021 606 karma

  @melisssam said:

  Four months? Try a year.

  I had to cancel my first two scores, because I FELT they were poor. I score high 160s on PTs. Exams I can't sleep before them and that first 10-15 minutes I can't get in the zone. I am wondering if I even got 160 today. Welcome to the club.

  It's a numbers game. Eventually you'll get a good exam with questions you handle well. And if you don't? Then you can't blame your failure for a lack of effort. I would much rather live with failure than doubt for the rest of my life, wondering, "what if?"

  Don't give up.

  You got accoms, you got Oct/Nov exams back to back. You have 7 tries. I know it costs money, but how bad do you want it?

  Stop bitching and get back to work.

  Good luck!
• melisssam Core Member

  August 2021 71 karma

  @whatsmyname Same boat. I’ve studied for over a year working only part time. But I changed my studying and quit my job for the last four months which is when I saw my biggest score improvement! That’s why I’m defeated because I put my all into it and it still didn't work out. Good for you for having the means to keep going!! I'm just having doubts that it just may not be in the cards for me
• 3 Likes

  nye8870 Alum ⭐

  August 2021 1749 karma

  If you want it....never give up.
• 11 Likes

  whatsmyname Member

  August 2021 edited August 2021 606 karma

  https://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/comment/183601

  @melisssam said:
  @whatsmyname Same boat. I’ve studied for over a year working only part time. But I changed my studying and quit my job for the last four months which is when I saw my biggest score improvement! That’s why I’m defeated because I put my all into it and it still didn't work out. Good for you for having the means to keep going!! I'm just having doubts that it just may not be in the cards for me

  You’re not defeated, you’re merely on the verge of surrender. You have to understand that some of us have to make greater sacrifices to get to where we want in life. It's very normal to feel what you feel. I think it’s worthwhile taking a little time to decompress. It would help to reflect, even on here if you would like.

  None of this may apply to you. You might be completely happy doing something else in life. If that's the case, then that's completely fine. Hang up your hat and never turn back. There is no need to torture yourself over this. But posting on here tells me you want to keep going, all you need is a little push. If you want a little push, then here it is.

  To get out of this slump, you have to honestly ask yourself: Why do you want to study law? What does it mean to you? What will it get you?

  I think revisiting these questions will help clarify your situation. The answers will remind you why you are doing what you do and make you stay focused. They remind you why you started and where you need to go in the face of both victory and loss. You don't get too high and distracted, and you don't get too low and give up. A realistic assessment is what keeps you away both from being overconfident and discouraged.

  For me, law school is a means to a profession (career), being around like minded, intelligent and ambitious people, getting a good salary, improving my critical thinking, gaining an experience, and having knowledge of the law. I don't have these things and I want them. This is what matters to ME. What matters to YOU?

  If you notice, I don't have some idealistic goals, they're grounded and very specific to me. I keep authentic to what matters to me and only me. I am not doing this to impress others, I am doing this so I can be better off in life and feel better about myself. Don’t bullshit yourself, it won’t motivate you; self-interest will. Figure out your pain points (poverty, status, ego, etc.) and link them to the goal (high LSAT score).

  After you go through that bit, remind yourself that absolutely everyone has doubt - what elite performers do differently is that they don't let it deter them. They don't let mistakes and failures discourage them, instead they use them as learning experiences to better themselves.

  You have to see this loss as an opportunity to improve, to refine, to persevere. It is an opportunity to strengthen your character, bolster your resolve, and grow as a person. The process to victory can be painful and gruesome, but suffering is what you have to go through to get where you need to.

  There's no secret or magic formula, it's just consistent practice and hard work. You have to keep working on breaking down questions, analyzing mistakes, seeing what strategies work through experimentation. Have you gone through all the PTs? Have you redone all the questions you got wrong? Can you do every game flawlessly? Have you analyzed your blind spots? This process is how you improve, we're not all born brilliantly smart. This shit takes grit.

  There is a great little poem from the movie Catch Me If You Can that captures this ethos:

  Two little mice fell into a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned, but the second mouse, he struggled so hard that he eventually churned that cream into butter and he walked out.

  Would you be having doubts about law if you had done well? Would you be having doubts if you had been in a different mind-state? I don't think so.

  Your current thinking is primed by your recent experience. It's not an objective assessment. By giving up here, this will be your final experience of the LSAT, all the while you have a few more attempts to get it right. You will reinforce a quitter’s, loser’s mindset, which spill over into the rest of your life. You should not permit doubt to take the wind out of your momentum. What you have to do is interject in your thought process. Change how you think.

  Quite frankly my biggest regrets in life were quitting prematurely because I let doubt and insecurity creep up on me instead of doubling down on my efforts. It’s not a good way to live. You never regret risking too much when you give it your all, but you always regret not trying or not giving enough – so don’t sell yourself short, and don't give up.

  On a closing note, you reminded me of an anecdote I read a long time ago from Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. It is called Three Feet From Gold. I went ahead and dug it out for you. I want you to read it.

  One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another.

  An uncle of R. U. Darby was caught by the gold fever in the gold-rush days, and went west to DIG AND GROW RICH. He had never heard that more gold has been mined from the brains of men than has ever been taken from the earth. He staked a claim and went to work with pick and shovel. The going was hard, but his lust for gold was definite.

  After weeks of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore. He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. Quietly, he covered up the mine, retraced his footsteps to his home in Williamsburg, Maryland, told his relatives and a few neighbors of the “strike.” They got together money for the needed machinery, had it shipped. The uncle and Darby went back to work the mine.

  The first car of ore was mined, and shipped to a smelter. The returns proved they had one of the richest mines in Colorado! A few more cars of that ore would clear the debts. Then would come the big killing in profits.

  Down went the drills! Up went the hopes of Darby and Uncle! Then something happened! The vein of gold ore disappeared! They had come to the end of the rainbow, and the pot of gold was no longer there! They drilled on, desperately trying to pick up the vein again— all to no avail.

  Finally, they decided to QUIT.

  They sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars, and took the train back home. Some “junk” men are dumb, but not this one! He called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer advised that the project had failed, because the owners were not familiar with “fault lines.” His calculations showed that the vein would be found just three feet from where the Darbys had stopped drilling! That is exactly where it was found!

  The “Junk” man took millions of dollars in ore from the mine, because he knew enough to seek expert counsel before giving up.

  Most of the money which went into the machinery was procured through the efforts of R. U. Darby, who was then a very young man. The money came from his relatives and neighbors, because of their faith in him. He paid back every dollar of it, although he was years in doing so.

  Long afterward, Mr. Darby recouped his loss many times over, when he made the discovery that desire can be transmuted into gold. The discovery came after he went into the business of selling life insurance.

  Remembering that he lost a huge fortune, because he stopped three feet from gold, Darby profited by the experience in his chosen work, by the simple method of saying to himself, “I stopped three feet from gold, but I will never stop because men say ‘no’ when I ask them to buy insurance.”

  Darby is one of a small group of fewer than fifty men who sell more than a million dollars in life insurance annually. He owes his stickability to the lesson he learned from his quitability in the gold mining business.

  Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of men do.

  More than five hundred of the most successful men this country has ever known told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them.

  Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delight in tripping one when success is almost within reach.

  Don't give up when you're three feet from gold. Keep fucking going.

  I hope this inspires you and you find the strength to keep going. Use this valuable experience as a source of inspiration to keep going. Whatever the outcome, the time you spend grinding towards a goal is never wasted.
• 1 Like

  yeasm22s Member

  August 2021 217 karma

  @whatsmyname thanks so much for writing this post. I came to this thread feeling disappointed about the test. This is my first official test. Had severe anxiety, couldn't sleep at all thinking about the test, and took the test feeling like a zombie, but I am glad that I was able to sit through the test without breaking. Thanks for the push!
• nye8870 Alum ⭐

  August 2021 1749 karma

  Needed that, thx
• whatsmyname Member

  August 2021 606 karma

  @yeasm22s said:

  @ney8870
  cheers
• sarakimmel Member ⭐

  August 2021 1488 karma

  @whatsmyname wishing there was a instead of a like button. Well said!
  I believe we only have 3 tries per cycle, 5 tries per 5 year period, 7 tries lifetime max. I would agree to max out if you know you haven't hit close to your potential, but over 5 years of the LSAT might drive a person mad! lol
• cheyjuan.m Member

  August 2021 23 karma

  There is a place called granitetestprep.com where they offer a mindfulness course just for test anxiety. I believe it's about $15. They also offer 1:1 counseling and test prep support. I know you aren't looking to raise your score and get help that way, but they will support you with test anxiety.

  Personally, I failed out of college on my first attempt because of test anxiety. Every semester I would do well on assignments but exams would account for 50% of my grade. With each passing semester, I was on academic probation, which exacerbated the stress. One day, I was teaching SI for chem and actually tutoring other classmates. We walked across the yard together and I was giving them all praise for their hard work. When I got the test booklet and scantron, I wrote my name and began to feel how tense the room got. I felt how close each of the students were sitting close to me. I felt dizzy. I couldn't even spell my name out. I went on to begin the test, doing mindful breathing, but I couldn't comprehend what the questions were asking me to do. I felt so insane. My heart started pounding and I was telling myself not to pass out there. I shut the booklet and tried to talk myself down. I asked myself what the worst that could happen would be? Is it better that I at least try to get some right rather than not to try at all. I told myself I'd just done the work and how proud I was of myself. Immediately thereafter, I slowly opened the booklet and read the questions. I couldn't get it. I told myself it was ok and to skip to the next one...the next one, then the next one. My vision started to blur and tears started coming down my face. I started to feel a tight pain in my chest and my stomach began to hurt. I felt like I was going to vomit. My head hurt so much. I left. As I walked down the hall, feeling as though I would faint, I stumbled into the bathroom and fell to the floor. My heart and chest were tight and the pains were so sharp. I honestly thought I was dying. I didn't know what was happening to me. I didn't have control of my legs. They were just weak. When it passed, I just cried. I couldn't take it anymore. I just left school and didn't return until 4 years later. I went to an extension school and finished my degree. I didn't realize that I would even want to try grad school or even that those first grades would count, or else, I would have just started over and not transferred the passing grades. Now I'm a splitter and once again, that test pressure is on. You know what though? We can do this.

  I have been running away from this test and the GRE since 2017. I couldn't even calm down enough to study for it. Mindfulness and meditation have helped me. I do Headspace. I've also read Creativity in Business and Excellent Sheep, which have changed my attitude about these results and systems in place. CIB was a Stanford course and is now a center there that incorporates mindfulness to allow you to reach your highest potential and unlock creative thinking by removing expectations and fear. ES is written by a Yale professor who discussed how our system brings unnecessary stress, which stops students from reaching their best potential. Both books acknowledge that it's not us and offer solutions.

  Introspection and therapy help as well. Anxiety is fear of the future. What are you afraid of? Is it that the proctor is watching? What makes this different? I'm sure you know but that fear of the worst possible outcome will cause it to come to fruition, but I know sometimes we intellectually know things don't make sense but we get so caught up that we can't help ourselves. Listen, I haven't taken the real test just yet, but let me tell you, you aren't alone. Those people you're trying to help. The things you will learn...Those experiences you will have... The regrets you won't have...that's worth it. Keep going.
• 1 Like

  CarrytheBoats-1-1-1 Member

  August 2021 92 karma

  No more poopy pants! This is a learning opportunity. Who's gonna carry the boat??
• 1 Like

  Relentless Core Member

  August 2021 379 karma

  @BigBoatsDG - And the logs!
• Glutton for the LSAT Alum Member ⭐

  August 2021 551 karma

  "When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."--Harriet Beech Stowe
• 1 Like

  whatsmyname Member

  August 2021 606 karma

  @sarakimmel said:
  @whatsmyname wishing there was a instead of a like button. Well said!
  I believe we only have 3 tries per cycle, 5 tries per 5 year period, 7 tries lifetime max. I would agree to max out if you know you haven't hit close to your potential, but over 5 years of the LSAT might drive a person mad! lol

  I agree, but I think you can squeeze out 5 tries over two years. Also, on lsac's page it says the past few FLRX exams didnt count towards your limit:

  Please note: With the introduction of the LSAT-Flex to provide a safe and effective mechanism for candidates to earn scores during the COVID-19 emergency, LSAC made the decision that the May, June, July, and August 2020 LSAT-Flex tests do not count toward these limits. Tests beginning with the October 2020 administration will count toward LSAT testing limits.
• 1 Like

  canihazJD Alum Member Sage ⭐

  August 2021 8491 karma

  I took it 7 times. Be smart about how you expend your takes, but above all else... just don't give up.