LSAT Diary: More Than An LSAT Score

This LSAT Diary is from Adriana, who's studying for the December 2014 LSAT. Below, she shares her LSAT studying experience.

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Please thank Adriana for sharing her story below in the comments!

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Adriana's LSAT Diary:

I tend to think of myself as an “unconventional student.” Or at least I am now… I graduated in 2013 and got married (read: eloped) two weeks later. I then uprooted from California to move to Wisconsin with my husband (who was then in the military) and began working as a paralegal at a small law office – a miracle in the world of job placement, I might add.

From the beginning, the LSAT was kind of a shadow in my mind… I did quite well in undergrad, and while I don’t necessarily consider myself to be wildly intelligent, I do take for granted the certain ease I’ve always had with academics.

I began working full time shortly before I started studying for the LSAT (in part thanks to our secretary up and quitting on us, so I had to pick up the slack). I started out with the best of intentions – wanting to study a couple of hours every day; planning to take prep tests regularly, and at the same time as the actual test… all the things pretty much everyone starts out saying they will do. But it didn’t take too long for me to start letting “life” get in the way of my T14 aspirations.

Before I knew it, it was 1 month to the LSAT… then 2 weeks… then 1 week… and while I felt reasonably confident in my knowledge base, test anxiety started to creep in. This anxiety was compounded by my sneaking suspicion that I wasn’t anywhere near being fast enough to complete the sections in a timely manner.

Test day came… and I freaked out.

In the first section, I still had 8 questions left when they called time. In the next section, another 7, and at that point I entirely unraveled. Going back and looking at my test now, the only time I actually did well on a section was after the break halfway through the test. But even with that post-break calm, I still didn’t finish a single section of the test.

I walked away from the test feeling railroaded, only to have that feeling repeated three weeks later when my score came back and it was lower than my initial diagnostic. It took me not only out of the realm of T14, but almost out of top 30 contention entirely.

I spent about two days wallowing in my own anger and misery. Anger at myself for not taking the test more seriously. Anger for not realizing that my time management was basically non-existent before I took the test. Anger that I had seemingly failed not only myself, but also the professors who believe in me, my father who is my inspiration in all things, and my husband, who has been nothing but supportive through every step of my academic career.

Thankfully, even through what felt like one of the lowest points of my life (which may sound a little dramatic, but for someone who takes academics as seriously as I do, this was a gut-wrenching reality to face), I had plenty of people there to remind me that the score, no matter how bad it was, did not define me. Taking academics so seriously, I often lose sight of the fact that in my constant quest for perfection, achieving something less than perfect doesn’t take away from me as a person.

So this post is for all of you who have goals and aspirations as high as the stars, and who are struggling with maintaining focus; for all of those who have taken the test once and didn’t do as well as you were hoping to; for all of those who find some piece of self-worth in academic excellence, and feel devastated when said excellence is not achieved…

This post is to remind you that you are more than just a score, and that your law school career will be defined by your perseverance, not by your LSAT score. And perhaps, like me, part of that perseverance will be to face the test again – or perhaps it will be to make the best of what you got because you simply don’t have it in you to do it again.

No matter where the path takes you, remember; this is just a speed bump – it isn’t absolute failure. Absolute failure only comes when you give up – when you do nothing. But so long as you keep moving forward, you haven’t failed… and you never will.

Photo by bobaubuchon