In PT phase - Under/Over Confidence during timed LR sections..

twssmithtwssmith Alum ⭐
in General 5120 karma
As advised by JY and other top scorers, one of the main priorities during serious PT phase is to cut out Under-confidence time sinks during a timed PT. Know your strengths, pick your answer and move on; Know your weaknesses and skip as needed to get the easiest points in your wheel-house.
Hmmm, just trying to implement a Skipping strategy caused chaos during my timed PT's. For those of you on the BR calls, I have been very vocal about how it was difficult to make that transition and not completely undermine any confidence I had answering the questions. Thanks to everyone and their advice on different skipping strategies - markings and notations to be able to go back to questions if I had a bank of time left, etc. I highly recommend using re-takes as you are trying to implement any new strategy. I also recommend video tape a section at least once, it can be very painful in post-analysis - or for me it was painful just being aware of my timing issues while I was taping:)
My notation during a timed PT is a slight dash under a question to review under BR b/c I want to revisit the explanation, circle the Question number that I am about 80% or between to AC's, and write a big S at the top of the page with Q# that I completely skipped. Not the best system but ever evolving.

Darn you @"Nicole Hopkins" with all my heart!! Last night on your office hours, I asked you how to eliminate under-confidence issues. Well, thanks a whole heck of a lot:( heehee:)
When you shared your beast of BR process for LR, I "wasted" a few hours today after a timed section writing out breakdowns of Q's that I was 100% confident. I have always tried to stick to a thorough BR of questions understanding why each AC was right or wrong for the Q's I circled or skipped. I never really paid much attention to the Q's I put a hash mark under other than verifying my AC was correct. Implementing your strategy to literally write out an explanation in sentence form of my entire thought process for every question that I was confident but "casually" hash marked was incredibly frustrating.

Honest evaluation: The problem in Under-confidence rears its ugly head when I am marking too many questions for review later providing a safety net keeping me from exposing Over-confidence errors.

I learned an incredible lesson tonight and will try to take this experience and knowledge into my future PTs to balance confidence issues to help my obtain my personal LSAT goals.

Comments

  • Ron SwansonRon Swanson Alum Member Inactive ⭐
    1650 karma
    @twssmith

    Great post. A lot of good lessons here and I'd want to echo how important it is to be honest with yourself about under confidence. For anyone in the PT stage, you're doing yourself a disservice to circle a question during PT being 90% confident, end up getting it right, then not bothering it examine it during BR. You were under confident for a reason! Can't let it slip through the cracks.

    One side thing I'd like to add on confidence as it relates to skipping..I often find that when I hit a patch of tough Qs in the high teens #s, it helps me to turn to the end of the section and work back. Sometimes seeing the fresh page and crushing some of the easier Qs that get tucked in at the end gives you the confidence to move back and get a fresh look at the ones that previously gave you problems. I'm not sure which sage said it, but part of the benefit of skipping is putting your mind at ease about what difficult questions may be hiding later in the section
  • twssmithtwssmith Alum ⭐
    5120 karma
    @"Ron Swanson" said:
    I often find that when I hit a patch of tough Qs in the high teens #s, it helps me to turn to the end of the section and work back. Sometimes seeing the fresh page and crushing some of the easier Qs that get tucked in at the end gives you the confidence to move back and get a fresh look at the ones that previously gave you problems
    Great advice - wish I had read it before my PT section today where I completely lost focus around Q18 - that would have been a great way to regroup when a deep breath didn't cut it to regain focus:) Thank you!!
  • MrSamIamMrSamIam Inactive ⭐
    2086 karma
    @twssmith said:
    @"Ron Swanson" said:
    I often find that when I hit a patch of tough Qs in the high teens #s, it helps me to turn to the end of the section and work back. Sometimes seeing the fresh page and crushing some of the easier Qs that get tucked in at the end gives you the confidence to move back and get a fresh look at the ones that previously gave you problems
    Great advice - wish I had read it before my PT section today where I completely lost focus around Q18 - that would have been a great way to regroup when a deep breath didn't cut it to regain focus:) Thank you!!


    This method works incredibly well. I've noticed, at least in PTs 40- ~60 that some of the easier questions are hidden towards the end. When mental fatigue kicks in, I also tend to focus on questions with short stimuli - more often than not, they require less brain power/memorizing/piecing together information.
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