Tipping Point
Imagine that you are sitting at a dinner table all by yourself. You are very disoriented and discombobulated, but the one thing that you do know is that you are very hungry. Starving, almost. In front of you, on the table, is a huge plate of [insert favorite food here]. The tableware is set, the food is presented generously, and the smell is amazing. Your stomach rumbles. You can’t remember the last time you were this hungry. The problem is, you can’t reach the food. Your chair is leaning on its back legs, and you are stuck on the verge of tipping over. You are in perfect balance; the chance that you will fall backwards and seriously hurt yourself is the same as you tipping the chair forward and eating the delicious food in front of you. You don’t know which way your chair is going to tip. If you tip backwards, at least you know that you can pick yourself from off the floor and get another chair, or find another way to sit and eat the food. If you tip forward, you know that you’re home-free. But you are neither; you are stuck in the middle, and have to wait at least three weeks before you know which way your chair is going to tip.
No the best of metaphors, but it’s the one I’m using to describe how I feel now that I have finally taken the LSATs. That’s right folks, the big day was yesterday, December 8th. I flew into Shenzhen on Saturday morning, which is a new, developing city in south China (about 4 million registered citizens in the city) about 30-45 minutes outside of Hong Kong, which is where my test was going to be administered. My dad has a place in Shenzhen, and I am blessed to have a father who will go out of his way to make sure I have to worry about as little as possible at moments when I stress out the most. He happened to be in town, and booked a hotel next to the Hong Kong Test and Examination Authority in Kowloon, so that I wouldn’t have to worry about how and when I was going to get to the test.
I spent most of Saturday studying and freaking out. Early in the week, I had taken three straight practice LSATs, and had done really well. Then, on Friday-Sunday, I took three more, and ended up doing much worse. Still decent scores, but not what I needed to get into the schools that I wanted. I started having a prolonged panic attack, and on Sunday I knew that I could not study anymore. I figured that I had done as much as I could, and that my score would come down to what types of questions I got on Monday. My weakness is in the logic games section, where one incorrect deduction or set up can lead to my fucking up a batch of 4-5 questions. If I could get all the logic games down, I knew I had a pretty good chance of getting a decent score. So I threw my hands up, ate a Nestle drumstick, and watched “Groundhog Day” (which is one of the funniest movies EVER) and tried not to think about the test as much as possible.
I woke up at 6:30 am in the morning the day of the test. I needed to get to the exam center by around 8:15, so I had less than two hours to feel fully awake, clean my pipes, and have the right amount of food so that I wouldn’t be too stuffed or, even worse, too hungry. My dad and I tried to orchestrate everything perfectly. I hit the bed early (around 10:00 pm) but couldn’t really sleep until an hour later, at which point I started having really weird dreams about my friend Wil using the sleeve of my gray t-shirt (while still being worn by me) to blow his nose, and then having a huge fight with me about why that wasn’t a friendship-affecting act. It was a little more than I was hoping for in terms of a good night’s sleep. My dad let me sleep and secured a couple of bananas for me the next morning. I wanted to have one for breakfast, since Judy had said it was good brain food, and I wanted another one during the test for a potassium infusion. I also took an Immodium to ensure that I wouldn’t have to go poo-poo cah-cah (an official term recognized by the LSAT folks), and a vitamin supplement to give me that extra boost. I was a standardized test-taking machine.
I won’t talk too much about the test itself, except that I did end up missing the set-up for an entire game. Thankfully, it was only 5 questions worth, so if I missed all my guesses then that’s 5 incorrect points. Some games have up to 8 questions, and that would have been disastrous. After I messed up on the games section, it was really difficult for me to focus on the ensuing section, but after 5 minutes I got my act together and tried to move on. Also, I shouldn’t have had those two cups of tea in the morning. After the break, somewhere between the third logical reasoning section and the reading comprehension section, I seriously had to go pee. And I still had the writing sample. I motioned the proctor and asked if I could make a quick bathroom run before the essay. He shook his head, and I was THIS CLOSE (for those of you who can’t see me, I’m almost pressing my thumb and forefinger together) to whipping little Eric out and pee-ing on his face, but I figured that lawyers weren’t allowed to behave in this fashion until at least 5 years after passing the bar exam, so I resisted.
Oh yeah, and I listened to Sarah’s “Answer” from her new album before the test to calm me down.
Some have asked me how I felt after the test. The only answer that I can give is that I feel pretty much the same as I did before I went in. Yes, it definitely is nice that I don’t have to study for it anymore, but I was really hoping to feel good about my score so that I could get into a good school. Instead, I feel like I’m sitting at the dinner table and on the verge of the tipping point, but I really have no idea which way I’m going to tip. Now, I still have to improve on a personal statement that I don’t feel too great about but can’t seem to make better, and finish up my applications to a variety of schools, with absolutely no idea what my score LSAT score is going to be. Needless to say, I still have a ways to go before I know if I’m going to crash backwards or step up and gorge myself and satisfy my hunger. As always, I’ll keep you posted.
And thanks to all of you who tried to calm me down when I was freaking out, and thanks to all of you who wished me luck, and thanks to all of you who believed in me. Actually, they are all the same people. You know who you are. Thanks. I owe you one.
No the best of metaphors, but it’s the one I’m using to describe how I feel now that I have finally taken the LSATs. That’s right folks, the big day was yesterday, December 8th. I flew into Shenzhen on Saturday morning, which is a new, developing city in south China (about 4 million registered citizens in the city) about 30-45 minutes outside of Hong Kong, which is where my test was going to be administered. My dad has a place in Shenzhen, and I am blessed to have a father who will go out of his way to make sure I have to worry about as little as possible at moments when I stress out the most. He happened to be in town, and booked a hotel next to the Hong Kong Test and Examination Authority in Kowloon, so that I wouldn’t have to worry about how and when I was going to get to the test.
I spent most of Saturday studying and freaking out. Early in the week, I had taken three straight practice LSATs, and had done really well. Then, on Friday-Sunday, I took three more, and ended up doing much worse. Still decent scores, but not what I needed to get into the schools that I wanted. I started having a prolonged panic attack, and on Sunday I knew that I could not study anymore. I figured that I had done as much as I could, and that my score would come down to what types of questions I got on Monday. My weakness is in the logic games section, where one incorrect deduction or set up can lead to my fucking up a batch of 4-5 questions. If I could get all the logic games down, I knew I had a pretty good chance of getting a decent score. So I threw my hands up, ate a Nestle drumstick, and watched “Groundhog Day” (which is one of the funniest movies EVER) and tried not to think about the test as much as possible.
I woke up at 6:30 am in the morning the day of the test. I needed to get to the exam center by around 8:15, so I had less than two hours to feel fully awake, clean my pipes, and have the right amount of food so that I wouldn’t be too stuffed or, even worse, too hungry. My dad and I tried to orchestrate everything perfectly. I hit the bed early (around 10:00 pm) but couldn’t really sleep until an hour later, at which point I started having really weird dreams about my friend Wil using the sleeve of my gray t-shirt (while still being worn by me) to blow his nose, and then having a huge fight with me about why that wasn’t a friendship-affecting act. It was a little more than I was hoping for in terms of a good night’s sleep. My dad let me sleep and secured a couple of bananas for me the next morning. I wanted to have one for breakfast, since Judy had said it was good brain food, and I wanted another one during the test for a potassium infusion. I also took an Immodium to ensure that I wouldn’t have to go poo-poo cah-cah (an official term recognized by the LSAT folks), and a vitamin supplement to give me that extra boost. I was a standardized test-taking machine.
I won’t talk too much about the test itself, except that I did end up missing the set-up for an entire game. Thankfully, it was only 5 questions worth, so if I missed all my guesses then that’s 5 incorrect points. Some games have up to 8 questions, and that would have been disastrous. After I messed up on the games section, it was really difficult for me to focus on the ensuing section, but after 5 minutes I got my act together and tried to move on. Also, I shouldn’t have had those two cups of tea in the morning. After the break, somewhere between the third logical reasoning section and the reading comprehension section, I seriously had to go pee. And I still had the writing sample. I motioned the proctor and asked if I could make a quick bathroom run before the essay. He shook his head, and I was THIS CLOSE (for those of you who can’t see me, I’m almost pressing my thumb and forefinger together) to whipping little Eric out and pee-ing on his face, but I figured that lawyers weren’t allowed to behave in this fashion until at least 5 years after passing the bar exam, so I resisted.
Oh yeah, and I listened to Sarah’s “Answer” from her new album before the test to calm me down.
Some have asked me how I felt after the test. The only answer that I can give is that I feel pretty much the same as I did before I went in. Yes, it definitely is nice that I don’t have to study for it anymore, but I was really hoping to feel good about my score so that I could get into a good school. Instead, I feel like I’m sitting at the dinner table and on the verge of the tipping point, but I really have no idea which way I’m going to tip. Now, I still have to improve on a personal statement that I don’t feel too great about but can’t seem to make better, and finish up my applications to a variety of schools, with absolutely no idea what my score LSAT score is going to be. Needless to say, I still have a ways to go before I know if I’m going to crash backwards or step up and gorge myself and satisfy my hunger. As always, I’ll keep you posted.
And thanks to all of you who tried to calm me down when I was freaking out, and thanks to all of you who wished me luck, and thanks to all of you who believed in me. Actually, they are all the same people. You know who you are. Thanks. I owe you one.
posted by sushipanda at 1:33 PM
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