Feeling lost

[Sjd207@scarletmail.rutgers.edu]

Hey everyone,
I’m relatively new to the powerscore community and this is my first time using the forums.
I’m currently in the 2nd week of the LSAT prep course, and while I’m very eager to continue to learn, I’m feeling a bit lost on some of the early on material.
For example, on the must be true HW, I started off slow at first, and then got better to the point I was getting them all right. I felt great. But then the next day when I decided to do them again, I rarely could manage to get any right.
I know it’s a process and patience is key, but I am wondering if anyone can offer me some advice so I can make sure I’m on the right track, I would greatly appreciate it!

[Robert Carroll]

sjd,

It's normal to feel overwhelmed at first. Especially at first, I think it's more important to know why answers are right than to be too hung-up on getting correct answers in homework. Early in the course, you're going to be learning new things, and, in some cases, unlearning things you thought you knew. For instance, a lot of people are surprised to learn in Lesson 2 that Mistaken Reversal is a mistake! And, even long after that lesson, they can continue to make the same mistakes. We don't teach that Mistaken Reversal is a mistake because we say so, or because LSAC says so, but because it is a mistaken way of reasoning. A lot of test content is about the kind of flawed reasoning that you might see a lot of in real life, so much of that it seems like it couldn't be flawed (otherwise, why would so many people make those mistakes?) So, in the beginning, you're learning to think in a different way. Sometimes that way can be so unnatural that it just looks like LSAC is making up the rules. That's why I think it's always important to look at explanations of the homework after you do it and check your answers, so you can see how to think through the stimuli/questions/answer choices. The goal is that, as your studying goes on, you will be thinking through those situations in the right way, and be able to explain why the right answer is right and the wrong answers wrong.

Do LSAT work every day. Even if a day is busy, if you can fit in even 15 minutes, that's great, because it's making the thinking necessary on the test more of a habit for you. If I had to "switch off" after work and say to myself, "Well, the flaw of Circular Reasoning used to be wrong when I was at work, but now that I'm off work, I can now use that flaw freely in my own reasoning", I wouldn't be developing the habits of thinking in an LSAT mindset all the time. You're lucky - once the test is over and you get your great score, you don't have to bother with Logic Games again - they never came up in law school, I can tell you for personal experience! But for now, you want to be developing these good habits and understanding why the ways of thinking we inculcate are good ones.

Robert Carroll