An Open Letter to September LSAT Takers

You aren’t my Facebook friend, but for a moment, take a glimpse inside my virtual, networking world:

VS is not taking the LSAT on Saturday, and that feels awesome. Really, super, tremendously awesome.

The weeks leading up to the LSAT were some of the worst in my college career. I was juggling the most difficult course load I’d ever taken, planning for a two-week overseas research trip that would put me back in the U.S. only two weeks before the test, studying for the LSAT, and facing the imminent departure of a person who I really did not want to see go. Saying that I was on edge would be drastically understating the level of Crazy I was operating at. But I got it together, did well on the test, and do not have to take it again tomorrow.

 

To those of you who do:

My sincerest best wishes. You are probably experiencing an intense freak-out, or, like me, you are remarkably calm for the first time in weeks, and you’re remembering that feeling normal is actually pretty nice. Either way, you have spent weeks and countless hours diagramming and finding the logical fallacies and flaws of reasoning in the arguments of the people around you. You know the test, and no amount of practice questions or full-length practice tests is going to bump your score in the twenty-four hours between now and Section 1.

Take a run, take a nap, eat a salad, eat a pizza, watch a movie, watch some porn, do whatever you want. Relax. Breathe. Don’t do any drugs you haven’t taken in the past. Now would be a bad time to drop acid for the first time. Keep it together, and get a score that will make me hate you a little bit.

Oh, give yourself something to look forward to after the test. Plan a night of a lot of vodka and tonics, vodka sours, gin and tonics, and Keystone Lights. Or buy a bunch of rom-coms and order pizza, like I did. Anything to remember that life will continue after the test. Good luck, and try to get some sleep tonight. And remember, NO NEW DRUGS UNTIL AFTER THE TEST. 

Love,

VS

The Test That Would Not Die

When browsing the occasional LSAT prep TLS forum, I am amazed at how much logic games have stuck in my mind. 

Like the records, “neither type of jazz and neither type rock is on sale” game.

I can visualize perfectly the set-up I used for this game. I wonder what important things are being crowded out of my memory by LG set-ups and conditions. Hm.

MCAT, LSAT, and all the other acronym-identified tests

Twelve hours ago, my roommate was mid-MCAT. Fifteen hours and fifteen minutes ago, my alarm went off, I dressed in my workout clothes, and then I drove my roommate to the testing location. We talked a bit about the test on the way there, and I saw her slightly nervous about the MCAT for the first time. Ever.

She is a very different person than I am, and her approach to graduate school testing was also very different than mine. But my response to her nerves about the MCAT was the same as her response to my nerves about the LSAT: I told her she would be fine, that she was prepared for the test, and that she wouldn’t get in there and lose her head and thus fail the test.

And I genuinely believed those things that I told her. But I knew that hearing those things makes zero difference to a pre-test taking mind because she, and many others, had said the same to me. In other words, it is easier to believe in others than it is to believe in oneself.

Or maybe it is just easier to be optimistic about a test that won’t change one’s life personally.

Time to pack up the horseshoes, four-leaf clovers, and rabbits’ feet.

I’ll need a little bit of luck today if I’m going to do as well as I’d like on the LSAT. According to my dad, I can rely on “[Our Last Name] Luck.” Then I pointed out that no one in our family has ever demonstrated luckiness besides him and that most of us actually seem remarkably unlucky. Oh, Dad.

Sleep time.

At this time tomorrow, I’ll be on the other side of the LSAT. 

Post-test plans? Pizza and an OnDemand movie (probably a terrible romantic comedy).

 

I am wildly out of control and rebellious.

Reality. The thing I’ve been overlooking since February. Nice to see you again.

Reality check: As long as I don’t open the test booklet and start crying or forget how to read, I will score well enough to get into a school that I don’t hate.

Seriously. I’m trying out this “perspective” thing, and things are looking better already.

Soon the LSAT apostrophes will end.

I do have interests that are not related to law school, but even on days like today, when I don’t feel crushing anxiety about the test, I have a hard time remembering what they are. I’ve managed to lose myself in Oscar Wilde’s wit for the length of a couple pages. I sing in the car until I remember a set-up that I did poorly and that caused me a missed deduction. I still work out every morning, but only because the stress of the LSAT compounded with the stress of feeling fat would be entirely too much to handle. I want to learn Korean, but that desire almost feels like it belongs to someone else, not to me.

I generally have a happy outlook on life. Cynical and guarded, but happy. “Crushing anxiety” does not have a place in my happy life outlook. I just want to feel like myself again. I want to go out for a drink and not be thinking of the test every moment. I want to get drunk and not worry about bursting into tears. 

Dear LSAT, please give me my life back soon.

Hopefully, I will be less crazy in a couple hours.

I’m a compulsive. And right now, I am struggling to decide whether or not to indulge my compulsion to take a full length practice test. 

This is sick, and I just can’t wait until the test is over.

I’m ready to be a little less insane.

 

Real time update: Dilemma solved. Instead of taking a full length PT after I have been doing section work since noon, I am going to make margaritas to go along with the tacos the roommate is making. Because I effed up boiling water for the second time last week (true story), I will not be surprised if I miraculously burn something without heat this evening.