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.
Comments
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.
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.
@"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!
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.