LSAT Diary: The 20-Something Fashionista

This installment of LSAT Diaries comes from Diya, a 22-year-old college student who's studying for the LSAT while attending college and maintaining a fashion blog. She's a busy gal.

In this LSAT Diary, she talks about balancing it all as she starts off her prep.

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Diya's LSAT Diary:

Hi everyone! I have a confession to make: I've never studied properly for a single exam in my entire life. This LSAT diary will not only be about me prepping for the LSAT on a daily basis, but also documenting the progress of paced exam studying for the first time in my life.

I guess I should tell everyone a little more about me. I'm 22, finishing up my last semester at UT for Chemical Engineering and Biochemistry after 4 years. Other than my course load, I conduct antibody engineering research, tutor for biochemical engineering courses, and...I run a fashion website [Ed. Not linked at Diya's request for privacy reasons]. In other words, I have no social life and very little sleep.

I want to go into patent law and am looking at the more selective schools, so (like everyone else) a score above a 170 on the LSAT is ideal. I have a pretty packed (although strange) resume, where I'm deciding if I should even mention "featured on various fashion websites such as Glamour, MTV Style, etc." and "attended New York Fashion Week" next to "developing antibodies for cancer treatment." I did intern at a law office so there's some law-related activities on the resume. My GPA is not bad (above 3.6), but not stellar either, thanks to the engineering curve and my unwillingness to stay up all night screaming at non-functioning Polymath code.

I took a diagnostic test (before finding this blog and reading Steve's post about why not to take one). I got a 160 with Logic Games as my strong point and Logical Reasoning as my worst. It's not great but not extremely bad either. I bought the 4-month day-by-day LSAT study schedule to keep me on track for the October exam.

Attempting to study in between summer engineering courses, research, fashion shows, and spending time with my neglected boyfriend will be an interesting endeavor. Hence why I'm writing this at 4AM in the morning when I'm supposed to get up at 7AM for research. We'll see how I manage.

Week 1:

Not too shabby! Despite a few nights of having to do LSAT prepping (there I made a verb) at 3 AM in the morning while everyone is snoring in the other rooms, I'm moving down the list of linear sequencing games pretty smoothly. Out of all of the games' problems (so around 150 total), I missed around 4-6 problems. I did take way more than 8 minutes on at least two of the problem sets, although sleep deprivation could have something to do with my slower speed. My diagrams mostly make sense, which I’m assuming is a good thing. I need to work on not reading the rest of the answers when I already have an answer choice, but the indecisive part of me keeps feeling uneasy about not reading all of the choices.

Time management was the biggest problem this week since I'm taking a summer senior lab and two 10-hour lab reports per week plus research does not leave much room for free time. Random fact: around day 3 I heard myself saying sarcastically, "yeah, that makes for a convincing defense of your position” in the midst of a fight. Great LSAT, you're turning me into more of a social outcast than I already am. Note to self: must keep formal logic-related terms to a minimum when at fashion events.


Week 2:

I’m constantly battling with formal logic on the in-out games. I hate reading carefully after so many years of scanning and being used to the author trying not to confuse the reader. I thought I was doing well until I attempted the game written by Steve, where my poor diagramming skills (unfortunately artistic abilities do not affect diagramming abilities) translated into me missing almost half the questions. Nooooo. I’m pretty sure the drawn arrows are NOT supposed be curved. I felt more confident in combating the next few games after half an hour of pondering at Steve’s diagrams. I only ended up missing three out of the three sets of book games. Not great, but better than before. I actually thought the game classified as “very difficult” from the book was the easiest game out of the in/out games, maybe because I had two basic templates set up and templates in general make more sense to me than arrows.

Anyway, I've basically experienced another week of mostly studying at 3 AM in morning. If that’s not dedication I don’t know what is. Me trying to fit in exercising, dealing with fashion PR peoples’ emails, eating dinner, and prepping for the LSAT after research every day is rapidly becoming a juggling game.

Photo by karinbar