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Mavis Beacon Teaches LSAT
Jonathan Wang
Yearly Sage ⭐
I was always a pretty computer-savvy kid; growing up in the heart of the Silicon Valley with parents who run their own custom computer shop will do that to you. As a result of being around computers all the time, I was a pretty reasonable typist by the time I was 10 years old. Though I never actually measured, looking back I was probably capable of typing about 50-60 words per minute with my custom hunt-and-peck technique, which included the brilliant innovation of using both the index AND the middle finger on each hand to speed up the process. Four fingers instead of two, for twice the typing speed! Talk about revolutionary. Those silly 2-finger-using folks just couldn’t compete.
When I was in fifth grade, I was introduced to the devil herself. I refer, of course, to the one and only Mavis Beacon (if that is her real name), and her heretical “touch typing” teachings. Initially, I thought I’d like her. I figured that she’d maybe teach me a few new tricks to speed up even further, and otherwise just reinforce how great a typer I was. After all, how could I possibly have any difficulty with ‘learning’ typing? I was already pretty good – if anything, I figured it would just be some refinement of technique.
Instead, she told me to do some ridiculous stuff. She told me that I should use all ten of my fingers to type, which I thought was completely unnecessary since I was getting by perfectly fine with just four. Then, she told me that I wasn’t supposed to look at the keyboard while typing, which really convinced me that she was off her rocker. What do you mean I’m not allowed to look at the keyboard while typing? How am I supposed to see what I’m typing if I can’t look at the keys? And, maybe just as importantly, what’s the point? Was this lady seriously trying to tell me that the mere act of looking at what I was doing would somehow be detrimental?
I tried it her way. I really did. But as a direct result of taking Ms. Beacon’s advice, my typing speed plummeted and my accuracy suffered tremendously because I couldn’t see what keys I was hitting. I mean, duh, what did you think would happen when you told me not to look at the keyboard? And when I went back to the four-finger method, I was suddenly fast and accurate again! Needless to say, I was quite displeased with Ms. Beacon and her so-called “instruction”, and decided that she was a fraud.
When we conceptualize progression, typically we think about building off of a base that we’ve already established. We spend 20-some odd years (at least – shout out to the older crowd!) speaking the English language, arguing about various things with friends and family, getting As on our essay exams, and so forth. From that, it seems reasonable to think that our base should be pretty strong. This is further reinforced by the notion we discussed last time out that everyone thinks they’re perfectly logical. And indeed, you can often get a surprising amount of progress by bulling forward with poor fundamentals, which further adds to the illusion. In any case, our brain (reasonably) thinks that we’re X amount of distance down the road, so anything we add on top of it should push us even further down that road, right?
Wrong. Because sometimes, you’re just on the wrong road. The fact that the you’ve spent a long time on that road doesn’t mean it’s close – in fact, it’s probably just more infuriating when you realize that it’s not taking you where you want to be going, and you need to get off that path ASAP. If you’re halfway to Mexico and you need to be going to Canada, then minor course corrections really aren’t going to help much.
So how do you fix that? Well, the first thing you need to do is backtrack to where the initial error took place. In the process, you will ‘lose’ some ‘progress’ that you’ve made, and that’s terrifying. When people see their preptest scores stagnate or even drop, they inevitably scurry back to doing things the ‘old’ way – the way that has ‘worked’ for them so many times before - because they're scared to death of losing those few points they fought so hard for. That’s an understandable reaction. But if you continue to hold onto your old, unprincipled methods of tackling the LSAT, you can only ever get so far. You will hit walls just like everyone else, but you will never be able to get past yours. Why? Because unlike what it is for others, where it’s just an overgrown speedbump, yours is actually just the end of that particular road. For example, you can get reasonably far without any conception of formal logic, but eventually you won’t be able to fudge it anymore and your score literally cannot increase until you deal with the issue. In the process of backfilling the gaps, you will likely have to rethink a lot of the ‘tips and tricks’ you’ve picked up along the way because they no longer make sense within your new theoretical framework. And so, the ‘regression’ happens as one bad habit exposes another.
Dealing with these issues requires you to internalize things that you haven’t really ever thought about before, and that’s hard. Mistakes will be made, and it won’t feel good. It feels like you’re taking a step backward because your results are decreasing as you continue to backtrack through your shaky foundations. It’s really tempting at this point to just throw up your hands and say that the new ways just aren’t working, just like 10-year-old me did in his first go with touch typing. This is also the point that a lot of people end up with a new set of LSAT books (because their previous materials *obviously* weren't very good), only to be further disappointed when their new materials essentially tell them to do the same thing as their old materials. Sorry folks, there are only so many ways to teach someone how to identify a main conclusion.
One of the most important parts of the process is unlearning all of the awful bad habits you’ve gotten away with your entire life. In the process, a lot of things that previously seemed clear will suddenly get murkier. That’s normal. Your brain is undergoing a course correction and establishing new neural pathways, and there will inevitably be some transition pains. Your brain has had 20 years to build up lazy junk pathways, so of course it’s going to be more comfortable with those than the new ones you’re trying to implement. But as you continue to internalize those better processes, your performance will leap ahead of where it was previously. You just need to give those processes time to lock in properly.
So don’t fret if your test results aren’t shooting skyward as soon as you finish the curriculum. That’s normal, and it’s happened to a lot of people who ended up scoring very well (including me). Instead, focus on making sure you’re learning the theory properly and not taking shortcuts, because if you cheat you’ll pay for it later. And, make sure that you stay mentally strong and resist the urge to lapse back into your old habits. As I sit here 20 years later, able to type 110 words per minute on my awful laptop keyboard and almost 140 on my good mechanical keyboard, I am incredibly thankful that I stuck with it and learned how to touch type. My short-term loss turned into a huge long-term gain, all because I gave it time to click.
Thanks, Mavis.
When I was in fifth grade, I was introduced to the devil herself. I refer, of course, to the one and only Mavis Beacon (if that is her real name), and her heretical “touch typing” teachings. Initially, I thought I’d like her. I figured that she’d maybe teach me a few new tricks to speed up even further, and otherwise just reinforce how great a typer I was. After all, how could I possibly have any difficulty with ‘learning’ typing? I was already pretty good – if anything, I figured it would just be some refinement of technique.
Instead, she told me to do some ridiculous stuff. She told me that I should use all ten of my fingers to type, which I thought was completely unnecessary since I was getting by perfectly fine with just four. Then, she told me that I wasn’t supposed to look at the keyboard while typing, which really convinced me that she was off her rocker. What do you mean I’m not allowed to look at the keyboard while typing? How am I supposed to see what I’m typing if I can’t look at the keys? And, maybe just as importantly, what’s the point? Was this lady seriously trying to tell me that the mere act of looking at what I was doing would somehow be detrimental?
I tried it her way. I really did. But as a direct result of taking Ms. Beacon’s advice, my typing speed plummeted and my accuracy suffered tremendously because I couldn’t see what keys I was hitting. I mean, duh, what did you think would happen when you told me not to look at the keyboard? And when I went back to the four-finger method, I was suddenly fast and accurate again! Needless to say, I was quite displeased with Ms. Beacon and her so-called “instruction”, and decided that she was a fraud.
When we conceptualize progression, typically we think about building off of a base that we’ve already established. We spend 20-some odd years (at least – shout out to the older crowd!) speaking the English language, arguing about various things with friends and family, getting As on our essay exams, and so forth. From that, it seems reasonable to think that our base should be pretty strong. This is further reinforced by the notion we discussed last time out that everyone thinks they’re perfectly logical. And indeed, you can often get a surprising amount of progress by bulling forward with poor fundamentals, which further adds to the illusion. In any case, our brain (reasonably) thinks that we’re X amount of distance down the road, so anything we add on top of it should push us even further down that road, right?
Wrong. Because sometimes, you’re just on the wrong road. The fact that the you’ve spent a long time on that road doesn’t mean it’s close – in fact, it’s probably just more infuriating when you realize that it’s not taking you where you want to be going, and you need to get off that path ASAP. If you’re halfway to Mexico and you need to be going to Canada, then minor course corrections really aren’t going to help much.
So how do you fix that? Well, the first thing you need to do is backtrack to where the initial error took place. In the process, you will ‘lose’ some ‘progress’ that you’ve made, and that’s terrifying. When people see their preptest scores stagnate or even drop, they inevitably scurry back to doing things the ‘old’ way – the way that has ‘worked’ for them so many times before - because they're scared to death of losing those few points they fought so hard for. That’s an understandable reaction. But if you continue to hold onto your old, unprincipled methods of tackling the LSAT, you can only ever get so far. You will hit walls just like everyone else, but you will never be able to get past yours. Why? Because unlike what it is for others, where it’s just an overgrown speedbump, yours is actually just the end of that particular road. For example, you can get reasonably far without any conception of formal logic, but eventually you won’t be able to fudge it anymore and your score literally cannot increase until you deal with the issue. In the process of backfilling the gaps, you will likely have to rethink a lot of the ‘tips and tricks’ you’ve picked up along the way because they no longer make sense within your new theoretical framework. And so, the ‘regression’ happens as one bad habit exposes another.
Dealing with these issues requires you to internalize things that you haven’t really ever thought about before, and that’s hard. Mistakes will be made, and it won’t feel good. It feels like you’re taking a step backward because your results are decreasing as you continue to backtrack through your shaky foundations. It’s really tempting at this point to just throw up your hands and say that the new ways just aren’t working, just like 10-year-old me did in his first go with touch typing. This is also the point that a lot of people end up with a new set of LSAT books (because their previous materials *obviously* weren't very good), only to be further disappointed when their new materials essentially tell them to do the same thing as their old materials. Sorry folks, there are only so many ways to teach someone how to identify a main conclusion.
One of the most important parts of the process is unlearning all of the awful bad habits you’ve gotten away with your entire life. In the process, a lot of things that previously seemed clear will suddenly get murkier. That’s normal. Your brain is undergoing a course correction and establishing new neural pathways, and there will inevitably be some transition pains. Your brain has had 20 years to build up lazy junk pathways, so of course it’s going to be more comfortable with those than the new ones you’re trying to implement. But as you continue to internalize those better processes, your performance will leap ahead of where it was previously. You just need to give those processes time to lock in properly.
So don’t fret if your test results aren’t shooting skyward as soon as you finish the curriculum. That’s normal, and it’s happened to a lot of people who ended up scoring very well (including me). Instead, focus on making sure you’re learning the theory properly and not taking shortcuts, because if you cheat you’ll pay for it later. And, make sure that you stay mentally strong and resist the urge to lapse back into your old habits. As I sit here 20 years later, able to type 110 words per minute on my awful laptop keyboard and almost 140 on my good mechanical keyboard, I am incredibly thankful that I stuck with it and learned how to touch type. My short-term loss turned into a huge long-term gain, all because I gave it time to click.
Thanks, Mavis.
Comments
My reasoning/argument-making ability was never really well-grounded. The fact is, no one ever really told me what an argument was or how to make one well. So I got by in college (and did quite well, considering) on the strength of my "close reading" ability and insightfulness. Well. Crap. That meant I never really had to address the shoddy understanding of reasoning, validity (which I didn't even learn for real until 7sage), logic. Bummer—that's all the stuff they're testing on the LSAT.
I really want a better understanding of reasoning and arguments, generally, beyond just what's on the LSAT. I'm struggling now to decide whether I should do that kind of deeper learning now, or just sometime before law school. I'd like to do it now, since I think it will help getting me those final 5-10 points I want on the LSAT, but struggle to know how to fit it in, or even what resources would get me there.
On a completely different note, this really makes me wish there were some sort of scrolling Mavis Beacon style LSAT prep game to play on my phone instead of killing time with all the usual time wasters.
@nicole.hopkins this sounds like a cool idea! got any resources in mind?
And Jonathan, awesome post! It hit home with me because I use a super fast maybe 6 finger hunt and peck and my husband has just this last week pushed me to work on keyboarding.... It is SO hard to unlearn bad habits...
This site helps to make learning to touch type fun and easy. I found it a couple of months ago and now visit regularly to practice my newly developing skills.
Nice post. Thx.