As thousands of students eagerly await their scores from this past weekend, other lucky students are just starting their journey into the LSAT — the December 2011 LSAT, to be exact.

For many of you, taking practice exam 1 last weekend was your first exposure to the LSAT. And chances are, you’re not happy with your score. This is good. Having just enrolled in a prep course, it would be aggravating (to say the least) if you could already score a 175. More importantly, this dissatisfaction can be used to great effect — so channel it. Use it as a motivation to study, as a motivation to attend class, and as a motivation to sacrifice Tuesday Night Drinking Club (at least until December).

What you don’t want, though, is to be discouraged. If your first score is dramatically lower than your desired score, it’s easy to despair. This is unwarranted and certainly counterproductive. Your PE1 score is in no way indicative of your potential, or in any way correlative to your ability. The LSAT is a truly unique test, unlike anything you’ve experienced, but it is an entirely learnable skill. And lucky for you, you have access to some of the best instructors in the biz.

Your score is simply your starting point. Where you end up is determined more by what you do now — whether you rise to the challenge and study, or give up and get a Master’s degree instead. Yes, you may be further from your goal than you’d like, but it is an attainable goal, and one worthy of the effort. To be absolutely clear – there is no reason why you can’t jump from a 120 to a 170 — and if you’re already telling yourself that you can’t, you’re just making excuses to avoid all the hard work needed to get there.

For some of you, this should especially ring true. Those of you who took a summer course and didn’t quite feel ready for the October test made the right choice in postponing. The next few months will allow you to go deeper into the logic underlying the test, to gain a mastery of it, and to reach the score that you deserve, the score that you will have earned with all your hard work. There is no limit to how much you can improve – use this as an opportunity to drive your score into the 70s.

For the vast majority of you, however, this will be your first time with Blueprint. Welcome to the family. The path before you may seem long and treacherous now, but we’re here to help. Our methods work, and we’d love to help you master them. And in no time you’ll be tackling the most fearsome logic games, the most convoluted of conditional statements, and the driest reading comp passages with supreme ease.