I am the Buddha of Reading Comprehension

Today I got off work at about Noon. I spent the 6 hours after that at work, in the bagel shop, reading and working through practice questions. I was able to make a useful discoveries: 1) I'm in the 95% percentile for reading comprehension questions, and 2) I'm in the 60% percentile for the dreaded logic game questions. As such my studies for the LSAT for the next 3 hours down at Borders were trying to shore up this weak point in my score.

Not that much shoring was done. The Distributive Grouping questions are very hard requiring you to make lots of deductions about the implications of different rules presented to you. What's most frustrating is that of the half I miss, maybe 30% of those are because I miss copied a rule down to my worksheet or just circled the wrong answer.

A few things:

1) Everyone has the most trouble with the logic games.

2) I'm good at the Sequencing and Matching games, it's those freaking (distributive) Grouping games that leave me batting only a point better than average.

3) Kaplan seems to think that the Logic Games are where students show the most improvement, after study.

KAPLAN

The end of July quickly approaches and I press on to get what ever advantage I can in the LSAT. I stopped by the library on the way back from work and picked up the Kaplan LSAT Test Book. I managed to get about 35 pages into it before leaving the library but between being sleep deprived and not having my meds with me I thought it best to take the book home and try to get through at least a quarter of it before night fall.

I also called my lawyer's office back he won't be back to early next week, so I will call him again on Monday.

UPDATE:

This book is amazing. The logic games, (that is the really hard part,) is getting easier and almost becoming fun! Also, having used up the last of my little molskin sketch book I moved on to a much bigger one. The extra space, helps tremendously!

Found a kink in the LSAT

I kept trying to do the Analytical Reasoning parts of the exam in the prep books and was having a lot of trouble scoring more than 75%, which as you can imagine, was worrying me. Today though I shifted gears a bit and instead found a place I can really collect some big points:

Logical Reasoning

Two words: Easy Peasy. I did much better in this section but still not as well as I would have liked. Perhaps with more practice I'll get better.

The good news is that the analytical reasoning section is both the part that students find hardest and the part that students improve the most in with practice. More good news, half your score is on the Analytical Reasoning part, not the part that I find much harder, Logical Reasoning.

Which School

I've been actively hunting law school for about a week now and it seems like it's starting to occupy most of my discretionary thinking ability. My facebook games have been left idle, as has my old ambitions in art. Today, I hunt for one thing.

Today's Hunting: Figured out where, based on GPA do I have the best shot of actually getting into. I did this by using the LASC web site's information on the GPA of entering classes. If you like you can see the link below on what schools I have been considering:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tS3zzwOVzp18L89aPAcIGbQ&output=html

From what I can surmise these 5 schools are in the range for where I can get into:
UCSD: Very Safe Chances
Loyola Marymount: Safe Chances
UC Hastings: OK Chances
UC Davis: I would be lucky
UCLA: Dream School

The good news is that while I stand little chance of actually getting into UCLA or Davis I can always transfer between schools. This is an option relatively few people actually pursue but in reality has much higher acceptance rates than apply your first year in. For example UCLA only accepts 16% although of last year's 300 transfer students 80 got in.

I also finished activating my account for the LASC website. I need to get my hands on 132$ for the LSAT application fee for this September. Hopefully I can finally get my hands on the last remnants of the settlement when I broke my arm in 2003. Now more than ever before I could really use a couple of grand for application cost and other fees.

Letters of recommendation:
Because of how I organized the student petition and was able to at least help in getting Lance Richlin rehired at LCAD he was a natural choice. I'm hoping that the whole episode could be used as an example of stellar extra-curricular work of a pseudo-legal kind, that also shows I'm involved in the school. However I am a little worried about using this story because it could also make me come off as a trouble maker who is likely to give the administration grief. Nevertheless though, schools such as UCLA or Davis are unlikely to accept me unless I have some stellar material for the soft side of my application. The other 3 schools, UCSD, Loyola, and Hastings, are more likely to accept me without me using a wild card like this, so for those schools I wont.

School Loans: I finally finished my Loan Exit Counseling today for LCAD. The piddly $1,800 I owe is soon to balloon to something closer to $130,000 by the end of law school. While this is a huge amount to owe I will have an actual career instead of a BFA to help myself pay it off.

Short Term Goals:

-Find 132$ for the LSAT preferably from my settlement but I will use my credit card if I have to.

-Complete free LSAT exam from June 2007 as practice. Depending on how I score choose what level of prep do I need to do from there. Use results to help refine school pics.

-Decide who else I want letters of recommendation from and call them.

-Call IRS get a copy of my 2008 taxes for possible fee waivers from application fees.

A Taste of Court

Today I went down to the LA Federal Court House for lack of anything better to do on my day off. I wanted to give my chance to see real lawyers really being lawyers to help dispel any romanticized notions of law. I spent about 2 1/2 hours there and found that it was largely what I expected to be on my first visit. Although, I was surprised by that incredible lengths the prosecution was making to reiterate again and again key points to make sure the jury was understanding what was being said.

Afterwards I made a marathon 16 mile bike ride all the way back to Santa Monica. On the way I stoped by my lawyer's office to ask his advice on a few points that I've been concerned about. Unfortunately he was on vacation so instead I just left a hand written letter for him. Eventually though, I want to ask him for an internship. I wouldn't accept anything so glamorous as answering a phone but I would be just as happy to bring his office coffee in the morning so I could get the reference. Besides, I'm sure eventually he would need something picked up or dropped off somewhere in the city and that is sure something I could do.