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The LSAT Prep Adventures of Cecilia Tsoukalos: Ready to Run

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Cecilia Tsoukalos is an employee of Blueprint LSAT Preparation’s main office. She is enrolled in one of our spring courses and has agreed to blog about her experience (under a pseudonym, of course). Catch up by reading last week’s introductory post.

We meet again, fellow LSAT prep students. As most LSAT classes are well underway (those of you in our expansion locations are a bit behind the rest of us) you may notice that we’ve moved on from book one, the dinosaur era, and are wading through bubbling lava in book two. And it only took two weeks. If anyone else is shocked at how fast it went, let’s start a club. Just know that I get to be club president because it’s my blog post, excuse my totalitarianism.

How’s about we take a look back at everything we’ve worked through thus far.

Congratulations, y’all (as a Texan it’s obligatory that I use y’all at least once every post)! We’re done with the implication family. The secrets to diagramming Must Be True and Soft Must Be True have been revealed. LSAT questions I previously found myself wanting to strangle Homer-vs.-Bart-style now seem much more manageable. According to Blueprint, the number one source for all things LSAT, there are typically less than three Must Be True and less than six Soft Must Be True questions per LSAT. I’m crafting a letter addressed to LSAC requesting more. Ready your stationeries; if enough of us write they have to listen, right?

But alas, there’s a flip side to every coin.

Lesson 2 was fine and dandy, then — wham! — Must Be False questions showed up in Lesson 3, a party they weren’t invited to. These are some really tough questions, and if you think otherwise you’d be wise to keep an open eye for a mob of jealous students wielding non-mechanical #2 pencils.

Fortunately, I received a much-needed spirit lift from my fellow staff members. In an effort to make the online portion of Blueprint even better, the tech and design teams have joined the ranks as online students and are currently working their way through the course. During some lighthearted office banter by the latte machine I asked Ivan, Blueprint’s resident animator, his feelings on Must Be False questions. He threw his hands up in disgust and said, “Don’t even bother with those”.

Whatever you do, don’t take Ivan’s advice. You can’t trust a man who thinks The Room is cinematic genius.

They’re tough questions, although they don’t come up too often on LSAT test day, so it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have them down pat. But it is still necessary to have a grasp on how to look for them. As I’m sure some of you have started to notice, there are similar types of questions prevalent on the Reading Comprehension sections of the LSAT, as well.

You also may have noticed that your roommates don’t quite understand what the hell it is you’re doing crouched over the dining room table at all hours of the night. Don’t be discouraged. Take advantage. Instead of grumbling at them to leave you be while you tackle under/overbooked ordering games, try a different approach. Pull up a chair and teach them how to do a game. It’s not as arduous as Reading Comp and (once you get the hang of it) actually kind of fun. I’ve always found that if you can teach someone how to do something it’s the best indicator that you really understand the material. If you’re having a hard time explaining how to set up a game it may be a good idea to go back to the drawing board. This also gives you a chance to engage in a bit of social interaction and pull your face out of the book for a minute. This method works for parents, too.

The LSAT course is moving quickly and the only thing that separates the kids who come out on LSAT test day wanting a drink to celebrate and the kids who come out wanting a drink to drown their sorrows, is practice. As a kid I hated practicing. I remember quite vividly threatening to run away because my mother asked me to practice my dance steps for five minutes. FIVE WHOLE MINUTES! Are you kidding me, Ma? But of course, Mother knows best. Fit whatever time you can (hopefully more than five minutes) into careful practice and homework and you’ll thank yourself when you get your LSAT score back.

Plus, most of you are paying your own rent, so running away isn’t a viable option anymore.