LSAT Diary: 20-Something Paralegal, LSAT Prep, and Breakup

This LSAT Diary is from J.P., a paralegal in her early 20s. She broke up with her live-in boyfriend of 2 years right around the time she started prepping for the June LSAT.

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Here's her LSAT Diary:

Day 1 (Monday)
A quick background on me and my interest in the legal field:

I knew when I was ten that I wanted to be a lawyer. I've been working as a paralegal since May 2009, when I graduated from the University of Florida with a B.A. in English. I work full time, 8:30 - 5 Monday through Friday and I'm enrolled in a prep class which meets twice a week for 4 hours at a time, although I always show up half an hour early for the review session. I go straight from work to class on these two days and go to the gym immediately after work on alternate days.

In today's class, we discussed Strengthen Logical Reasoning questions. We also did a logic game which literally gave me a migraine that was only curable by the Valium that I took when I got to my car. I absolutely hate logic games. I kick ass on LR and Reading Comp, but games are like completely ridiculous to me. Nonetheless, I press on. Every night since I have started studying for this test I have had to take Valium (prescribed by my doctor in a small dose) in order to sleep through the night. I try to keep up with my workout schedule and just exhaust myself, which helps too.

However, I am grateful for class and work today, as it keeps my mind off of the fact that I just broke up with my live-in boyfriend of two years... and our lease isn't up until August. Financial obligations and not wanting an eviction on my record are creating increased levels of stress for me today and for the first time I can say that I am glad to have the LSAT as an all-consuming panacea for my relationship and finance-related anxiety. I plan to attend an upper-tier law school and didn't want what I now consider to be a parasite along for the ride, hence no more boyfriend.

On my lunch break today, I did some logical reasoning questions. After class, I did some reading comp, for about an hour of outside of class time studying, bringing the total for the day to 5.5 hours.


Day 2 (Tuesday)
No LSAT class today. I came to work early because I was having some pretty severe anxiety this morning about being at my house and the "ex" situation. Studied for about 15 - 30 minutes before my bosses got to work. I worked on mostly menial tasks that I've been putting off since I've been busy with trying to get settlement demands out and working on a few litigation cases. Thus, other less important tasks were on the backburner for a while.

As this firm, you don't have set schedules or deadlines for anything, but if you don't do what you need to be doing everyone will know. You will hear it from your clients, the attorneys, claims adjusters, Doctor's offices and billing offices. Unfortunately in the personal injury field, listening to bitching from frustrated (injured and/or sick) clients about their own insurance company (which they chose and presumably evaluated before they purchased it) and "why everything is taking so long" is not uncommon. It is not unusual for me to hear from clients on a daily basis although I'm managing about 80 cases at present time. Work is a great distraction from the rest of the world! I love my co-workers who keep me strong and push me to do well on the exam.

After work, I went home to have a "house meeting" about the issues going on. After a long discussion, my ex and I will continue to live where we are until our lease is up. Our other condo-mates are also recently broken up and they have both decided to move out of town and continue to pay their share of the rent. Fortunately, my ex and I have gone through a lot already and are getting along better after talking about the reasons why we both know that this never would have ended in anything other than a break-up/divorce. The next four months will be interesting.

After the "house meeting" I went to a friend's house to do drills and homework while she studied some kind of wacky chemistry. She cooked us some delicious dinner while I was there and we took a study break. I was not surprised to get a phone call from the ex asking "if I had had dinner yet" followed by "ok well I'll just eat some ramen then." Ok, indeed. After studying for probably 2-3 hours, I came home, popped my Valium and passed out at 11 or 11:30.

Total Study Time: Estimated 3 hours


Day 3 (Wednesday)
Wednesday was the best day of the week so far. Work wasn't too stressful and I crossed a few more things off of my to-do list, which is always nice. After having the talk with my ex yesterday, I am feeling much more comfortable about the status quo and trying not to think too far ahead, just taking life a day at a time. As coworkers find out that I'm single, the reaction is invariably positive which is nice.

I studied LSAT vocab during my lunch break (defining different terms that you see often on the LSAT) for about 15 minutes. After work I headed straight to class and was super exhausted during the review session so I chugged my water and took a caffeine pill which helped a lot. We did all three section types yesterday (LR, Reading Comp and Games) so my attention was better held than it usually is.

I felt really confident about Reading Comp and Logical Reasoning and didn't get a single question of either category wrong through the various drills. I actually get sort of annoyed sometimes during reading comp when people ask questions about things that seem blatantly obvious to me. All you have to do is look at a particular line in the passage to get the answer.

This is the only thing that I don't like about the class, in that there are many different levels of test-takers. There are almost 100 people in the class, so I guess that's to be expected (and makes me feel better about my chances). I'm really impatient which is good for my job and career but maybe not so good for interpersonal stuff.

Anyways, then there was games.

We did a game from the October 1991 LSAT exam (PrepTest 2). I somehow managed to get three of the six questions right even though I completely blew the set up and missed huge deductions. I have been drilling games and reading the explanations but it's just not clicking for me. I'm not sure what else to do except keep doing homework and keep trying. I again started to get a bad headache during the discussion of this game but fought it. When I got home I watched as much of "The Hangover" as I could before passing out. Crude comedy is a great antidote to LSAT prep!

Total Study Time: 5 hours


Day 4 (Thursday)
Today did not go as planned, at all. Work was more or less laid back but some DVDs that we received from Europe of a Defendant's deposition were badly scratched and that caused a chain reaction of problems throughout the day. Whatever.

Got home from work and did about 30 minutes of LSAT vocab drills, which place me in the top 10% of people who paid $1500 bucks to learn how to take a test... haha. Thought about this fact and laughed at myself some more on my way to the gym to get my ass kicked. A friend of mine teaches a really challenging barbell class on Thursdays, so I went today. I love it because its an hour where I hurt too bad to think about anything (LSAT/relationships/real life) other than my quads/triceps or whatever other muscle group is getting punished.

Got into the car and saw two missed calls from the ex. Called back to find out that he had ordered pizza and bought beer "for us." Thanks, thats exactly what I want after I just kicked myself in the ass to burn maybe 600 calories. Anyways, I got home, relaxed and caved to the peer pressure of pizza and beer, thus ruining my plans to do some more LSAT work when I got home. But we did have fun, and thats what I'll remember when I'm at John Jay's school of water-skiing and law.

Total LSAT study time today: 30 minutes :( FAIL!


Day 5 (Friday)
Fridays at work are usually either really busy or really calm. Since one of my bosses was out this week today was decently slow but I definitely was looking forward to the end of the day. I had a feeling that this weekend would bring more surprises my way so I did a bunch of logical reasoning problems on my lunch break (approx 1 hour) and some vocab drills in the morning before work (about 15 minutes). I had planned to go to happy hour and then study afterwards but that plan changed, as they seem to often do nowadays.

A few friends and coworkers had planned to all meet at a place right near both work and my house, where they have amazing food and drinks and an amazing happy hour special after work. So we were blessed with a 4:30 departure instead of a 5:00 on this glorious Friday. This is when normal life became ridiculous life. I went home to change and the ex and our other roommate were by the pool drinking, so I decided to have a drink with them. After chatting for about half an hour I told them that I was leaving. "Where are you going?" - Ex. "Happy hour with some girls." Feeling obligated, I invited them both as I expected them to continue to drink at the pool and be generally awesome dudes.

I left for happy hour and met up with my friends from work, the gym, real life, etc. and we are all having a great time drinking good beer and eating good food. My ex calls me from the front door of the bar with our roommate in tow. The second that he got to the table everything became awkward and tense. He stared at the TVs the entire time that he was there and when anyone tried to engage him in conversation he gave a few words at best in response. So I was annoyed because he was either 1) checking up on me or 2) trying to make me have a shitty time.

I asked him to step outside with me to figure out what his problem was but of course he didn't want to, since he is a child. Fortunately, they left 30-45 minutes later and I stayed for another few hours with everyone. I returned home to the ex asleep at 9:30 pm in our bed and joined him, ending another wonderful day of cohabitation with a jerk.

Total LSAT study: 1.15 hours


Day 6 (Saturday)
This weekend was a blur. I woke up on Saturday, took a diagnostic from 10-about 1:30. I've gone up 4 points this month so that made me kind of sort of happy but not ecstatic. I then went to go lay out by the pool since its a rare pleasure that I can only take advantage of on the weekends. I brought my LSAT book with me and did some problems until the sun was in full force and then put it away. Total pool studying was maybe an hour and a half.

When the ex came home from work, he joined me by the pool with some Coronas. I love Corona, even though it is a shitty beer, because it reminds me of the Keys and the beach. So we sat by the pool and talked about how we'd like to be able to live together comfortably. I made lots of suggestions about how this could be done and he agreed. He also told me that he's getting a mattress from a friend but didn't say when he would be using it.

We went out to dinner that night with our roommate, which was sort of a turning point in the weekend. Throughout dinner the ex made snarky little comments here and there, and I'm not the sort of person to let this go. This ended with character assassination and me fantasizing about the giant steak knife that I was using to cut my filet.

When we got home I immediately went to my friend's house and indulged in mind-numbing activities until I went home to pass out.

Total study time: 4.5 hours


Day 7 (Sunday)
After my diagnostic yesterday I wanted a break and I didn't wake up feeling great. I cleaned up around the house a little bit (laundry, vacuum, etc.) and then went to lay out by the pool again. My roommate got home before the ex so he came and laid out by the pool. We talked about our breakups and how we were trying to make the situations amicable. The ex got home pretty late so there wasn't much sun left, but he again brought some tasty beers. We were all getting along fine but not talking much.

The LSAT was the last thing on my mind today but I grabbed my book when we went inside and they were flipping around various sports channels while I did problems. I felt growing tension so I went for a walk and called family members who didn't yet know that I am now single. When I came back home, another friend of the ex's had arrived and drinking was in full force. I continued to do problems out of my workbook while intermittently talking to the guys. This continued until about 10pm when the ex and company decided to "go hot tubbing."

I immediately got pissed, because I told him that for us to live together comfortably I need to be able to sleep uninterrupted and not worry about him gallivanting around town (drunk) with other people (girls). He said everything would be fine, not to worry about it. At 12:30 am, I am awoken by his two friends coming home, without the ex. I immediately flip the eff out and demand that they take me to the hot tub. They take me to the hot tub, no ex there.

At this point, I am hysterically flipping out. I don't even want to recount the various crazy things that I did to try to find him but the story ends with me taking two valiums at 1:30 and passing out until 6 am, when I woke up and drove around looking for him. I officially HATE my ex-boyfriend and hope that he drowned in the hot tub. It turns out that he had passed out at an apartment in the complex where they were "hot-tubbing" but the dynamic of our relationship has gone from pretty great to pretty horrible.

At this point I am debating whether it would be a good idea to just stick it out for the next 55 days or to deal with moving all of my things before the LSAT and paying two leases through July. This drama is very much unwanted at this point in my life, obviously, but my plan is to bury myself in my work. We'll see what happens! I hope that the readers of this crazy week of my life are able to see that even with crazy drama and a crazy schedule you can still study your butt off for the LSAT and do well. I'm at a 158 right now and I started much lower. My goal is to be in Top 25 range (168 +) but of course I'm hoping for a 180 ;).

Thanks for reading and good luck to everyone on the exam.

Total study time: about 4-5 hours with distractions/talking in between

Photo by paperbackwriter / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0