Hey guys!
I'm new to this so bear with me please. I'm taking the September LSAT and I have no motivation to study. I know how serious it is and how important it is to do well, but I can't seem to get out of this rut. I take a class that meets twice a week and I love going; but when I'm not in the class, it's not the same for me.
Maybe I'm the type of person who needs to study with a buddy. I'm curious to hear if any of you ever dealt with something similar? Please let me know
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I suggest you take a diagnostic test and see how brutal the test is. Then you can decide if you want join 7 sage class.Talking about the study buddy, you could find one on 7sage. But at last,study LSAT is a long journey alone.
There is also a study buddy locator on the main page where you login. This uses your location to see if there are other local peeps who are looking for study buddies.
Right now I have a small group of people who I am study buddies with. We all keep each other motivated, talk about progress, problems, and overall hold each other accountable. It is pretty sweet! Technology makes keeping in touch easy.
I also think @dennisgerrard is so right in keeping in mind why you are doing this. When I feel myself losing motivation, I first take a break and make sure it isn't burn out. I also have a stupid Harvard Law School shirt I bought offline and I wear it. I know it sounds so stupid, but I imagine how it would feel to actually earn a spot at the law school of my dreams. I think of how different my life will be and how good a feeling it will be knowing it was all worth it.
I also found writing a draft of my personal statement, which talks about why I want to go to law school, This really helped me remember why I am doing this. Every few days I re-read it to get motivated.
https://7sage.com/forums/discussion/7949/
@Kateryna I started studying in June. I wasted the first month looking for secrets to crack the LSAT. I book the Powerscore Trilogy, Manhattan Prep Trilogy, The LSAT Trainer, and several other supplemental books. The LSAT Trainer is very helpful though, so I think that is where some of my improvement may have come from. I didn't finish it because I started 7Sage, but I plan to do the 16 Week Schedule eventually.
My first timed Diagnostic taken June 7th, 2016 and was a 151. My improvement has been pretty amazing actually. 7Sage helped me begin to absolutely kill Logic games! 6 weeks ago I felt like I was doomed because of the games. I think I missed 18 LG questions on my diagnostic. I read through The LG Bible and was still sucking with time and confidence. Because of 7Sage's fool-proof guide to perfection on LG, I am missing like 4-5 questions per timed section. it took a lot of work and I only did LG for like 3 weeks. But it was so worth it. I now look forward to a -0 on test day.
LR/RC are places of great inconsistency for me. So I know I need a lot of work in these areas. I've seen some really great improvement in LR. It is hard to quantify because I haven't really done much timed, but the last timed section I did, I missed like 4. So there is unquestionable improvement. I think being consistent is going to be the battle for me. The good news is that the questions I have done in the CC are the ones I am doing best on. Most strongly supported used to kill me, now I seem to be getting most of them right.
So the improvements will come, but they do take some time.
I will say that postponing was the best decision I ever made for my law school future. There would be no way I could be scoring in the 170s confidently by September or December. And the worst part is when I was planning to take the LSAT this cycle, I was finding myself having to skip lessons and listen as like 1.4x speed to be certain I would finish. And now that I have been able to go back and do the lessons throughly, I am realizing I missed a lot of important things.
So what are your goals? What’s your dream school? What’s your dream job? That’s what should excite you. You’re not going to law school on a whim, you are setting out to accomplish something!
Much like Frodo set out to destroy the One Ring.
Yep. I’m doing it. Lord of the Rings metaphor. Deal with it.
Frodo was motivated to do one thing and one thing only. Destroy the One Ring. But did he just stroll into Mordor and cast it back into the fiery chasm from whence it came? Nope. First, he had to get to The Prancing Pony. (Okay, okay, I know what you’re all thinking. No, Frodo didn’t know he’d have to go beyond Bree at this point. The Fellowship hadn’t been formed yet, and The Council of Elrond hadn't even been assembled. So he really didn’t have any greater motivation at this point than to get himself to the Inn. So yeah, technically at this point, destroying the ring wasn’t his actual motivation. But that’s missing the point man. Frodo wasn’t made the Ring Bearer at the Council of Elrond, he always was the Ring Bearer. He just didn’t know it until then. It was always his task though, his own, and he was the only one who could have fulfilled it. Even though he couldn't have known exactly where the road to Bree would end, he was headed to Mordor the moment he left Bag End.) And before we can reach our own Mount Dooms, we’ve all got to get to Bree first. If we don't first get to Bree, we never cross The Bridge of Khazad Dum, we don't sneak past Minas Morgul, we don't get across the Gorgoroch Plateau, and we don't destroy the One Ring.
The LSAT is only Bree, and it's hard to get excited about Bree. The hobbits there are super weird and there's humans, what's even going on? And what the hell is Aragorn doing there in the first place? My point is, it's not a place anyone really wants to go to. It's certainly not where we will accomplish the thing we've really set out to do. But unless we make it there, we can never accomplish the rest of our goals. As it turns out, it's not so easy to get to Bree. It takes a lot of hard work and motivation. There's Nazgûl out there! So to make it, you've got to approach the LSAT with the same passion and motivation you feel for whatever your version of destroying the One Ring is. Because if you don't defeat the LSAT, you'll never make it to Mordor.
Although it's better to enjoy prepping for the LSAT and come to see the test as "fun in a way," it's normal to feel lack of motivation, especially at the beginning when everything is unfamiliar.
It helped me to think about how prepping for the LSAT made my logical thinking sharper. The particular techniques are not immediately applicable in law school in a direct way, but the general improvement in logical thinking is definitely applicable in law school and in life generally. Besides for logical thinking, I also got excited (even if a little artificially so at the beginning) to read RC and learn about a variety of topics that I might not normally read about, and to read about these topics from a passage that is generally academically satisfying and purposeful.
Besides for LSAT-specific motivation, the underlying drive for prepping is to go to law school and have a legal career. For this, you will likely find the best motivation from within, in your own reasons for seeking law, than from others. Others' reasons might resonate with your own, but you should upon reflection find yourself driven by your own internal and self-affirming goals.