Confidence in Games?

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• 6 Likes

  BinghamtonDave Alum Member ⭐ 🍌🍌

  January 2017 8716 karma

  I've invested a considerable amount of time into games. Although I did not take a diagnostic, when I first started LSAT prep I could only answer 1 question correctly untimed (the standard acceptable situation question) out of the entire set. It think it is safe to say that if I had taken a diagnostic, I would have gotten -20 or -21. As an aside, I think if one were to set up a study in which a cat retrieved a treat from one of 5 bowls marked A-E and then marked that letter on the answer sheet, I'm confident that a cat would have done better than me when I started lol!
  
  With that being said, 13 months later, +1200 games, 2 timed sections per day, I can tell what went wrong here for you with a pretty high degree of confidence. Almost everything that can go wrong in the games sections, has gone wrong for me throughout my learning process: from misreading a rule, to misbubbling to forgetting a piece. I've translated the word "before" in the rule set to "after" in my visual representation, I've read "neither" as "either" which in grouping games sets one on a course to get almost all the questions wrong.
  
  I think the answer to your question about the worrying about misreading something that is now causing your timing to suffer is twofold: 1.You've got to rebuild your confidence in your approach to games. Rebuild by practice, rebuild by fool proofing, rebuild by keeping a notebook of mistakes you do make that you review for 3-5 minute per day and remember not to make those mistakes again. I've had to do this a dozen times over.
  
  2.Assimilate a practiced and efficient check of how you have translated the rules vs. how the rules are presented to us in the setup. This check takes me between 7-10 seconds. I work from the bottom rule up to the top rule, checking that I have them written correctly. The reason for this is I once had a professor that made us edit the grammar of our papers by reading the last sentence first and reading the whole paper backwards: that way our minds didn't read what we "knew" what we were saying, but what was actually written on the paper. This process of isolating what we are being told vs. what we have written might seem a bit awkward, but it has worked for me! Others might disagree, but I always check that I have written things correctly. The goal for me in this quick check is to trust that the LSAT isn't going to get something by me twice. Building towards that in an efficient way might be helpful moving forward. I have not made a mistake in translating a rule since October.
  
  
  I hope this helps.
  -David
  
  
  
  
  
• Frostbyte Member

  January 2017 140 karma

  Thank you so much for the advice, @BinghamtonDave! I think you're spot on about the notebook and the check at the end! I generally skimp on foolproofing because I find it expensive and time consuming to reprint everything. Do you print or use another method? (I have PDFs)
• BinghamtonDave Alum Member ⭐ 🍌🍌

  January 2017 edited January 2017 8716 karma

  I actually print everything. Double sided. It stinks but I have kept every game I have ever done. I'm going to recycle them all at once. I actually invested in a $49 printer that I use for LSAT related prints. I print and do games. On Wednesdays I do 5 hours of games.
• 1 Like

  stgl1230 Member

  January 2017 821 karma

  I printed everything, too (also double sided). Definitely time consuming, but absolutely worth it.
• Frostbyte Member

  January 2017 140 karma

  Thanks for your responses, guys! I can't buy a printer I bought transparency films from Amazon. Going to tape them together on the bottom and sides and insert LG pages. Will see how that goes.
  
  I adopted the bottom up approach and it's helping my confidence already! I'm all ears if you have more comments!
• BinghamtonDave Alum Member ⭐ 🍌🍌

  January 2017 8716 karma

  @Frostbyte keep us posted!