Ah, the test day. The day you’ve been waiting for and
dreading, but mostly the day you just want to be over. It’s here. And here’s
what to do and what to expect. Roughly. If you have a mind anything like mine.
Which, for your sake, I really hope you don’t. Mine is a bit scatterbrained.
The first thing (and this is very important—potentially the
most important thing I’ll say today) is that you need to have a friend who is
willing to get up at 6 am on a Saturday, drive to the next town over to buy
some of the most delicious scones in creation, and then drive back so they can surprise
you with breakfast. This is essential for creating the right testing atmosphere
straight from the get-go. I happen to have such a friend, and they’re very important friends to have (not just for the LSAT test
day, but for life in general).
(This is Catelyn. You'll probably see a lot of her on this blog because I'm immensely fond of her. Also because she's freakishly awesome and does oodles of cool things and I inevitably end up living vicariously through her. She's pretty much the world's best person. Someday you all will love her almost as much as I do.)
If you don’t have such a friend, spend time
after all the hulabaloo of the LSAT is over looking for one, and in the
meantime make yourself breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day J Also, testing rules
say you’re allowed to bring snacks with you and you should totally utilize
that, because it turns that out that sitting in a chair for hours on end and
doing nothing but frying your brain and filling in bubble sheets will still
make you hungry.
When you get to whatever testing center you’re going to,
pretty much everyone is going to look nervous and a little scared. Everyone
that is, except for that one kid who has a seat right at the front because you
know he got there a solid hour ahead of time, and he just looks super
bright-eyed and bushy tailed, and very, very determined. It’s important that
you never get in this kid’s way in life. Ever. He will be succeeding at
everything he does, and you just don’t want to mess with getting in the way of
that. If you are that one kid,
congratulations. I’m proud of you. You’ll do great things in life! You probably
skipped breakfast to get there that early though, and that’s bad. Or you
cheerfully got up at 5 and you have a kind of willpower that I will never know.
So, after you’ve all gotten situated and have had just
enough time to psych yourself out that you are going to epically fail, the test
starts and the proctor gives you your time warnings and you’ll kind of get in
the zone and, honestly the first half of the test flies by. It’s the second
half that makes you start looking into various forms of suicide.
Halfway through your delightful 5 hours of testing, they let
you have 15 minutes to stretch, eat, go to the bathroom, etc. Of course you
can’t leave the ordained area and you’re not allowed to discuss the test in any
way, shape, or form, but you get a break. This break murdered me. At first I
appreciated it, because it is really nice to stand up after sitting for so
long, but if your mind is anything like mine, once you have a break from
something horrific, it’s really hard to go back. Getting my mind back in the
zone was incredibly challenging and section 4 was the section I did the worst
on. (Hands down. I mean, it’s not even like it was a close call or anything. My
percentage of right answers drops drastically in section 4. It was kind of sad.
You know what was even more sad? Section 4 wasn’t my test section that didn’t
count for anything. That was section 3. Which I aced by the way. Of course.)
The moral of that paragraph?
Don’t Ever Let
Yourself Get Out Of The Zone!
Know full well that you’re going back into that room and
brace yourself for it. Make your brain cooperate with you. (This is also why
it’s so important to build the stamina during the practice tests. And maybe
take a 15 minute break during the practice test. I never did that. Look where
it got me. I mean, I’m still going to school and all, but I could be going to
school with a higher LSAT score!)
During your break, you and the other testees will be idly
chatting (about everything and anything besides the test of course. The
proctors watch you like a hawk during your break. Don’t think that they don’t.)
and you’ll begin to notice a slightly fuzzy, yet solidly divisive line between
you. A rough 40% of you will be calm, collected, somehow looking even more
refreshed after 2.5 hours of test taking than you did before. They’ll be
laughing and joking during the break, looking suspiciously like the poster
children for the covers of LSAT prep books across the nation. Another 40-45%
will look just a little bit like mildly well-groomed drug dealers. They’ll be
ignoring all the pleasant small talk. Usually you can identify them because
they’re staring out windows and calculating how easy it would be to force the
window open and jump, all while anxiously biting their nails and pacing back
and forth. The other 15-20% of you will be somewhere in that middle ground,
trying to figure out where exactly you fit between the Rico Suaves and the
Pablo Escobars of the world.
I, unfortunately, fell a little more towards the drug dealer
percentage of test takers. While I wasn’t biting my nails (it took me years to break
that habit and there’s no chance I’m going to let a paltry thing like a
life-changing test weaken me), I did have a hoodie (since they ARE a comfort
clothing item and I DID leave my house at 7:00 on a very, very chilly December
morning) and a messy bun (and I’m not talking about the cute messy buns that
some girls pull off. I can’t quite figure that out. I’m talking about the messy
bun that looks almost identical to a rat’s nest) and small talk absolutely
wasn’t something I was feeling capable of. I did smile a lot. And nod my head
kind of inanely. A few people were looking at me like they were a little
worried about my mental state, but let’s not go into that…
Regardless of which category you fall into during the break,
once the test starts back up again you all meld into the same faceless ball of
anxiety (minus the perky soul up on row 1), racing toward the finish line.
And then you’re done. Just like that you’re done! The
proctors shoo you out the room (actually it’s more like they try to organize chaos
as people stampede out of the room) and tell you you’ll get your results in a month
(which is just their own form of cruel and unusual punishment).
Now, once you’ve finish your test, there are several options
for how to spend the remainder of your day:
Locking yourself in your room with a pizza and Netflix is a
very, very good one. It’s not one I chose, but it’s one I would have chosen
hands down did I not have prior engagements.
Going out with friends (or spouses or significant others or
family or whoever you have nearby that you love who also loves you) who are
continually telling you how smart you are and how well you did is another. (Just
make sure your friends have the stamina to keep up the phrase, “No, [insert
your name here], I KNOW you did amazing! You did better than everyone else in
that room. I bet you’re the first person to have gotten a 180 on that test!”
repeatedly for about 2 hours.)
A third option is to aimlessly wander around the building
where you took the test, reliving every single detail and wondering how you
could have done better. But I don’t recommend that option.
Whatever you choose, be proud of yourself. You just took a
killer test and you survived! You didn’t even just survive, you probably
excelled. You’re basically bomb.com, and you’re well on your way to becoming
lawyered!
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