Last week, I wrote about the thrill of success when studying for the LSAT or speaking Chinese (and, as it turns out, I’m defining “success” quite loosely here). Sometimes, you’ll experience that exhilarating moment where you take a leap and it turns out that you can fly – you get -0 on a Reading Comprehension passage for the first time, or you do ten Necessary questions in a row and get them all correct.

I wish, for your sake and for mine, that LSAT prep was always about such happy moments. However, that is not the case – as you probably know, LSAT prep is not all sunshine and roses. Sometimes it will be full of small victories and triumphant moments, but…

Every once in a while, you get a chicken foot…

On my last night in China, my friends took me to a club. Along with our bottle of Chivas (and a green tea drink to mix it with), the club brought us some snacks: a lovely fruit arrangement, some delicious peanuts, and chicken feet.

I devoured the fruit. I noshed happily on the peanuts. But chicken feet… really?!

Everyone hopes for smooth sailing on their LSAT – no unusual questions, tricky passages, etc. Of course, that’s not always the case; you might get a delicious and beautiful fruit arrangement.

But every once in a while, you get a chicken foot.

The good news is that, as I wrote a couple weeks ago, that shouldn’t be a cause for concern. It might look a little scary and have a strange number of toes, but if you have to eat it, just pick it up and take a bite.

In fact, to strain this analogy a little further, by now you should have a set approach for any question on the LSAT. You have a strategy for every type of Logical Reasoning question (for instance, for Strengthen questions, you should always start with the conclusion and then determine whether that conclusion is causal). Even if you read a question and have no freakin’ clue what’s going on, just take a deep breath and start going through your normal steps. You’ll be amazed at how far you get.

So, the journey of a thousand LSAT questions begins with a single step, and the journey of a chicken foot begins with a single bite.

(I did try that chicken foot, in fact. It was pretty much what you’d expect, and I returned to the fruit arrangement shortly thereafter.)