Road to Law School Part II

I could have given up. I entertained the thought.

But imagine?

What kind of coward turns his back on his dream, on his calling, on his duty?

Despite my constant drive for self-improvement and self-fulfillment, there's a lot of things I regret about my past. I could have played more sports, I could have gotten much better grades in college and in high school.

Could have. Would have. Should have. Didn't.

That had to stop.

I was an adult now. I had to man up and say, "No, you know what, I'm NOT going to back down from this. I WANT this."

And thus began the Summer of my Discontent.

I was too proud to go back to school and start work on another pre-law academy or a master's program as a "safe" alternative in case things didn't work out.

So I decided to work on taking my third LSAT.

It was back to square one. Yes, I remembered the lessons from the pre-law academy, but I needed another whetstone to sharpen what I had learned.

Enter Powerscore. If you're thinking about taking the LSAT and do not want to go through the Kaplan-UTB pre-law academy, try Powerscore. It worked wonders because, while Kaplan is great, theb ooks when it's stand-alone. Powerscore puts the power in your hands by going into real deep details about the problems on the LSAT.

And yet, it was all me. I had the support of my family, my friends, but I was the one doing the studying.

With my parents at work and my brother at school, there was no one to tell me during the day, “Hey, it’s time to study!” or “Hey, you’ve only studied for two hours today, you’re slacking!”

I had to do all by myself. During the summer and on through August and September.

If I went out, I felt guilty. If I didn’t study four hours a day, I felt guilty. My dreams were LSAT dreams. It was madness, but it was a hole I dug myself into, and it was a hole I was going to have to crawl out, a gritos y a sombrerazos.

And then it was time to take the LSAT. The LSAT, simply put, was a harrowing experience I don’t EVER want to go through again. With other big-name tests, such as the SAT, the ACT, and even the tough ones like the MCAT or PCAT, you’re tested on shit you should have an idea about already. Not only that, but generally speaking, if you’re taking the MCAT or PCAT, you have (usually) a good foundation as an undergraduate in scientific related fields.

There’s none of that in the LSAT.

There is no “LSAT major” that gives you a foundation for the test. I had originally thought that those who majored in philosophy had an edge over those that majored in something else, but that wasn’t true. During our Kaplan sessions, the first thing the instructor asked was “How many of you have a background in philosophy?” Five people raised their hands. The next thing he said was, “Alright, forget everything you ever learned. It won’t apply here.”

You’re essentially going up against a test you can only prepare so much for, and what you can prepare for is only a small bit of what you’ll get. Powerscore and Kaplan both tell you what you might expect and what the LSAT makers might do in the test.

And the test.

I don’t ever want to take that damn test again. For many reasons:

1. Anxiety attacks are common. Up to that point I had never, ever, gone through one, but as I was finishing my last section, I panicked. Bad. Luckily, I kept my wits about me and finished the section and only allowed myself to give in to the panic after I had left the testing room. Once I did, though, the anxiety hit me pretty bad. I had trouble breathing, thinking, even driving. I made it back home in one piece (even though I ended up near Corpus for a brief period).

2. Every second counts. Your mind starts playing games with you if you take longer than the forty seconds to answer a question (logical reasoning) or eight minutes, 45 seconds to complete part of the reading comp or a logic game. And by playing games, I don’t mean “Oh, haha, you might have missed the previous two questions, after all, it’s totally B, not C!” I mean: “In all likelihood, you missed the last five questions, and they were in the easy-intermediate section. That means your pillow is gone in the last section. In other words, you probably will tank this section and you will tank the test. If you tank the test, that’s it. You’re doomed to a couple of years of mediocrity in the Valley.” This is terror. It makes C'tulhu look like a cup of ice cream on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I literally saw my future crumble to ashes in front of me. This is not a very happy feeling. Oh, and for weeks before and weeks after, I would wake up in the morning in cold sweat, thinking that it was October 2nd, 2010, and I was running late for the test. These feelings would subside eventually, and I would eventually learn to accept God's will in this matter.

3. UTPA is not the most conducive place to test. It’s great if you’re a UTPA student and actually know where everything is, but if you’re not, you’re pretty much reduced to guesswork (unless you had scouted the place beforehand). All the buildings look the same, there's no signs pointing you to the room, and unless you're first in line, you will be seated at a higher level than someone else in the testing room.

a. The testing rooms…those were bleh.

Everything worked out, though, praise God. I received my test results on Halloween morning at College Station. My score would prove to be enough to get me into South Texas College of Law, one of the law schools I had enamored myself with last year.

And that, as they say, is that.