Return to Blog Homepage

Studying with Victoria: Reaching the Halfway Point of LSAT Study

BPPvictoria-lsat-blog-running
Wow, apparently the halfway point in the lessons has come and gone and I didn’t even notice. I feel like I should celebrate with a belated Line Crossing Ceremony, minus the hazing. It’ll be great, instead of going before King Neptune; I can hit up Apollo for his logical blessings upon an LSAT n00b. Libations of Monster and coffee will be offered, Latin will be uttered, and I’ll boldly go into the second half of the course.

Come to think of it, I guess we did have a sort of Line Crossing. This past Saturday, we took practice exam number two which, while lamer than a party where you hang out with deities, was probably more useful. It was definitely useful having to do approximately four hours worth of questions because it gives you a sense of just how much endurance you need to have to take that test. Between taking the first practice test, going to classes each week, and taking the second test, I’d forgotten how draining that sucker is. By the end of section four, I was pretty much ready to check out mentally. You can only do so many problems before your brain starts going “Oh, HELL NO,” and then makes you miss stupid things like specific words in the prompts.

At least there were entertaining little gems like finding both folklore and Pliny mentioned in the exam. I was not pleased that Pliny got mentioned in a logical reasoning question where the second person was saying that Pliny is completely useless because he mentioned dog headed people in Naturalis Historia. Oh really? Want to take this outside, buddy? My thesis topic and I have a bone to pick with you. Aside from feeling the need to spring to Pliny’s defense against some made up person in an LSAT question, I felt pretty good after the test was over. “After” being the operative word. My scored improved by 6 points, which didn’t seem like a lot until I saw the difference in percentile groups. Damn is all I can say.

The other day, I gave myself a break from thinking about test prep and went to visit the campus of a school I’d like to attend. My mom had come up to visit for the weekend so we made a day of it. What started out as a seemingly simple task of driving south and then west across the Bay, turned into a gauntlet of things gone wrong. First, the brake light and tail light indicators on Earth Mother’s dashboard came on. Earth Mother is my car. She’s named Earth Mother because she’s old, green, and the air conditioning only works when she thinks it should. If she were personified, she’d be a frumpy, old, hippy woman who munches on homemade granola while participating in tree sits and berating you for driving. Needless to say, she fits right in in Berkeley.

Anyhow. I check to make sure that the tail light is indeed out and then pop the hood to check the brake fluid. Fluid’s low. Ok. There’s a Pep Boy’s along the way, so we head there to get Earth Mother all fixed up. With my car newly fixed, we get back on the freeway only to discover that the mechanics neglected to fully close the hood of my car. What the hell?! We pull off the side of the freeway so I can close it and then go on our way again. The day finishes with seeing a high school classmate by chance on campus, roughly 500 miles from my high school, and dropping my glasses and needing an emergency trip to Lens Crafters.

The point is, my life is both a comedy of errors and filled with strange coincidences. On the plus side, making a campus visit has really allowed me to have a concrete idea of what I’m working for, because oh my god do I want to go there. Sure, getting a 180 on the LSAT is a great goal, but numbers alone just don’t cut it for me like mortar, stone, and nice landscaping. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t know if it’s daylight or an on-coming freight train, but for now, it’s the reason I’m slogging through long hours in class and longer hours doing homework.