LSAT Diaries: The 22-Year-Old Repentant Slacker

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Leave Jake some encouragement and advice below in the comments!

Jake's LSAT Diary:

I write you from beautiful Santa Cruz, California, a city built equally on surfing, liberal activism and weed. Having just graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a History degree, I found my job prospects in history to be what one might expect: either get more education, or put boxes into other boxes for a living. While this provides some good stimulation to seek more education, that is not why I am trying to go to law school.

Both of my parents were court reporters, and both of them complained about lawyers endlessly. "They're just so darn sure of themselves," my Mom would say. Despite this, they did have lawyer friends. My Dad would sometimes "ask" me to proofread some of his transcripts, largely to make me get off my ass and work, and I enjoyed reading these transcripts enough to be terrible at it. Psychology majors need not inform me that this entire law school thing is just an attempt at rebellion/acceptance, as I've already considered that and agree.

Here comes the confession: I have always, until recently, been a slacker. Not the traditional slacker, but rather someone who only does what is necessary to get by without making waves, with no attempts at excellence. I went to a community college to start and transferred to UC Santa Cruz, and in all my classes I completed all of the assigned reading in exactly one class, and completed none of it in more than half. I never failed to turn in an assignment, but I'd often turn in my first draft of a paper that I had banged out in a short afternoon's work. To say memorization and recitation is not my forte would be an understatement. Yet still my grades were decent enough (3.3 at community college, 3.47 at UCSC).

It wasn't until I took my senior exit survey on Hitler and Stalin that I realized what I was missing. In this class, a hilarious and incredibly wise professor led a 18-person class in what was essentially a confrontational book club. We all read at least 10 books and wrote at least 70 pages (one book per week + books for 20 page research paper). Everyone was impassioned and had come up with their own conclusions on the books, and for our last meeting we got together at a student's house and drank while talking about our individual research projects. In the next, last quarter, I got the best grades I have ever gotten. I was later told that the class sounded a lot like law school, and that's when my research began. And now, here I am.

My studying habits revolve around my job: I have a 9-5 type job, and as I said earlier, I put boxes into other boxes. Luckily there's only about four hours of boxing to do, so I have the other four hours to research law schools and get all my transcript/letter of recommendation/personal statement business done. Unfortunately, that work ran out quick, so now I've resorted to acting like a kid looking through a car magazine, except the cars in this magazine are law schools. "Ohh that looks cool. Too bad it's in New Jersey. Oh, that school looks cool. UGH I WISH I could afford that one." Etc. My GPA isn't great but it's good enough: getting into a top 20 school will require a great LSAT score, but it's at least achievable. I'm setting my sights at getting a solid chance at Boston College and Minnesota, even though I'd still be happy going to a University like St. Thomas in Minneapolis.

These are high hopes, but I am also a great test -taker. I started my LSAT studying two weeks ago when I ran into one of my UCSC professors on the bus downtown (he is also now writing me a letter of recommendation). He had with him a friend who was in law school, and since then I have been a law school freak. I took my first practice LSAT that day (the only one i have done untimed), not knowing what to expect. I scored 20 on the first section, which was reading comprehension. Second section had the games, and I scored a fantastic 4/24, which is slightly worse than if I had guessed. I didn't even total up my final score from my test, afraid of the answer.

After working through Logic Games, I took their practice test a week and a half ago and got a 157, getting 13 right on the games portion. This is and probably will always be my weakest portion, because one bad game will knock off good chunk of my score. My main problems surrounding logic games are my inability to make connections between the clues and the diagram, and the tendency to misread some clues. The questions around text and arguments somehow just make sense to me, probably because of my extensive experience arguing. "What can be inferred from your argument, Mom, is that you think my respect for you is proportional to the amount of time we spend together."

The problem with LSAT study plans is that they are built to get you to study. What I need is something to get me to stop studying. Last week I constantly had a book in my hands, something my roommates have come to hate. The only good studying space is the living room, where my roommate comes to break up my study sessions by playing death metal at full volume. I can say with confidence that when LSAT day comes, I will not be fazed by a student tapping their pencil.

Since that first scored and timed test, I've been doing Logic Games (and redoing them). I took my first "Actual Official" LSAT PrepTest yesterday, one from 1995 (yes, I wish I had found this blog before I bought my LSAT books). When I tallied my score from test 14, I knew I had done well, but I wasn't expecting the whopping 168/169 (my raw score split the two) to be staring back at me. I had gotten lucky, with four easy games on which I missed only one. Yet it also proved it's a possible score. If only I had been 22 in 1995. Don't worry, Steve, I'm getting the LSAT books you recommended.

If there's one thing I'm worried about more the LSAT games, it's my own willpower. I have been looking at LSAT and law related stuff for 4+ hours per day, every day, for two weeks. I say now that I will not stop until I master games, and master the LSAT. Yet I know I'm the type to burn out quickly. I only wish I could fall asleep on an LSAT book and wake up in October knowing everything. But I guess I wouldn't get to do the fascinating work of putting boxes in other boxes.