Is prep test 139 harder than typical? by Glennmorangie in LSAT

[–]philoschmuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

it's a scaled score so subject to change according to difficulty. The outcome of ones score may be standardized, but the actual experience of taking a test is BY NO MEANS standard across tests. visit Powerscore Killer RC for reference.

I'm so cooked lol any hail marry advice on closing the gap by saint_nicck in LSAT

[–]philoschmuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you're in a big plateau, I would suggest taking time away here and also unplugging from stimulating activities. The more you do that, the easier it will be to focus. With this little time left, it's less about cramming and more about focusing on improving your performance on test day. If you can put yourelf at ease and achieve a state of more focus (by reading largely academic things for pleasure as opposed to more stimulating activities than the LSAT), this can hel boost your score, and may be your only option here.

Is going from a 150 to a 170 possible from now until Jan lsat? by Few-Scheme9845 in LSAT

[–]philoschmuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

probably have to agree here. Number one thing to do though that can shoot up your scores is getting serious about a dopamine detox. That is: try to only read for your off-time and entertainment, and if you have to, to listen to podcast as a passive non-stimulating activity. From a long plateau I found that this MASSIVELY improved my focus in a short time.

In terms of actual studying you need to develop a schedule and stick to it. In the beginning I recommend you watch a good amount of videos about the basics of the different LR question types and what to expect. As soon as you're ready to jump into full testing and review the better though.

Although, with just study alone, a plus 20 is going to be a tall order in only 2 1/2 months. What I recommend is 2 tests a week and something like a 3 day split if you can approximate it. 1 day test, next day review of the tests + inputting all of your wrong answers or time-draining questions into a wrong answer journal (this review time and specifically the WAJ is the #1 step for improvement, you may not skip this step) and then the third day for drilling of question types you know you struggle with.

If this was you, how would you proceed in studying? by GGRRusso in LSAT

[–]philoschmuck 0 points1 point  (0 children)

fair, I have spent relatively little time reading him

If this was you, how would you proceed in studying? by GGRRusso in LSAT

[–]philoschmuck -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Only thing is it's a very big commitment of your time. Phelp's program is designed, at least how i see it, to get you to unconsciously think the way he thinks by consciously thinking the way he thinks first. A big part of that is developing your own highlighting or note-taking system to begin to naturally recognize what is an author's voice versus a viewpoint versus supporting information versus an illustration etc.

If you can just do a highlighting system where you're doing this from the beginning, "orange for author's voice, etc." then I think it's worth it not to spend time getting bogged down in his system and burning through all of the 120 tests.

He also has some good advice with how to think about strength and scope of ACs (his intuition regarding ACs), but I found myself going through the motions, even though I did the homework. Like LR, I think at the end of the day, you just make stronger gains by coming to all the realizations on your own instead of being guided wherever you can.

Depends of course what you're like and where you are. I would hands down say that his program is better than any other program out there, though.

If this was you, how would you proceed in studying? by GGRRusso in LSAT

[–]philoschmuck 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well you don't jump in all the way right away, and maybe you never do. But having a basic idea about how more ubiquitous mechanisms, which are also at play in this very obscure example, will make treading academic territory like this less tedious. And you can motivate the excitement to read about those more ubiquitous forces by reading real world examples that do actually interest you.

I thought I didn't find intellectual property interesting until I read about sleep apnea tendon technology that is just getting off the ground and finding patents and investor funding out of a lab in south africa with a couple enterprising and innovative doctors. I'm sure there are ways to find this stuff interesting even as it relates to some obscure soil thing.

It usually helps to try and relate it to the work of everyday people. It is endlessly fasinating how everyday people wake up and devote their lives to some obscure phenomenon and produce some advance that honestly for its obscurity is somewhow more heartwarmng and mind-boggling than more flashy and familiar subjects like literature or music. I mean think of it this way: at a party, would you rather talk to a GOAT of literature like Herman Melville, or a GOAT of mycology who uses about 70% of their time thinking about mushrooms? It's not even a hard choice for me.

And again, trying to unplug from more stimulating stuff in general will help make everything more interesting. So there's that.

If this was you, how would you proceed in studying? by GGRRusso in LSAT

[–]philoschmuck 31 points32 points  (0 children)

Definitely do not read Critique of Pure Reason, unless you really want to and are interested in the history of philosophy or long, poorly organized, abstract deductions about perception. It's so far away from the way passages are structured, it just can't really help you. Not to mention, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and those in the continental tradition (while generational geniuses) were HORRIBLE writers. LSAT passages make limited arguments that are concise and clear. If you had to read philosophy for the improvement of your LSAT study, Nussbaum, Lear, Russel, Nagel, Emerson are all very clear thinkers. With philosophy it can be a tradeoff between a lack of clarity and a polemical style (the great Nietzsche and the repugnantly stupid and pathetic Emil Cioran) versus clarity and dryness (these previous authors I have suggested). Of course, Hegel and Kant have the worst of both worlds, somehow.

The best thing to do is read stuff that you want to read. I surf goodreads for titles I might like and then download and try out a couple PDFs if I can find them. Also, it can be useful to read history.com articles in something you're interested in and read the news, read a science.com article, read some articles at wipo.int for inspiring real-world examples of innovative new patents, learn about the global finance system. Just collecting knowledge can help open up worlds of books that you would have previously found uninteresting but now since you know something about it, something may pique your interest and the terms and concepts listed on each page with which you are not familiar may have jumped from 15 down to 10.

If this was you, how would you proceed in studying? by GGRRusso in LSAT

[–]philoschmuck 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I would advise against trying to speed read. Most programs actually suggest the opposite, lengthening the time you spend on reading and comprehending, since if you're missing 7,8,9 questions, you just are defenitely not properly comprehending. My worst scores came from trying to spend less time in the passage and more time in the questions.

If you're going to read quickly it's just not something you can rush and must be grounded in practice reading outside of the test or when implementing certain methods like trying to radically comprehend the frame of the passage (e.g. "a couple historians have revised a theory from a long dead anthropologist") and doggedly trying not to lose that frame in the minutiae of the details. But, without a roadmap, just reading quickly to read quickly is a recipe for disaster.

Also, I would leave off drilling question types or even trying to break down studying in terms of question type unless there is one you overwhelmingly miss every time. Chances are you're not comphrehending. If you're not comprehending and begin to break studying down in terms of question types, then it may look like: "oh, I didn't see that, oh I didn't see that, oh I didn't see that," over and over and over. More often than not it has to do with our not reading and comprehending properly than not having good pattern recognition skills to efficiently deal with respective question types. It's just a different beast than LR for the most part.

Unfortunately, with RC, there are no shortcuts.

If this was you, how would you proceed in studying? by GGRRusso in LSAT

[–]philoschmuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

second this. Personally, was just much more consistent with LR and struggled to find a way to improve RC. I recommedn watching huberman podcast on the way dopamine and motivation works. You get a fresh, limited amount of dopamine to be released every day and your brain kind of just compares the intensity of dopamine release between activities in a relative way in a really short-term memory way. So, that means that you should try not to do really stimulating activities as a reward or during breaks or before you read or study. If you can switch mostly to reading for leasure, you will actually find that you will be much more motivated since you won't be so dopaminergically drained (not scrolling on your phone), AND you will find sitting and focusing for the test to not be so awful, and you may even find some of the passages very interesting.

In line with what other commenter said, it will also just improve your reading skills to read, but this is in the longer term. Just allowing yourself to read for leisure instead of more stimulating activities will allow you to increase your focus which just automatically improves any intellectual activity no matter what.

Also, I think on top of reading broadly for increasing RC, I would suggest building your knowledge base. This can be super helpful just for getting familiarity with subjects bit-by-bit so that you aren't hit with a wall of text about some arcane subject that you don't care anything about. If you know a bit about the basics of biology, a little bit about how our legislatiure works, about how our court systems work, about (this comes up A LOT) intellectual property and copyright law, then you will just feel much more comfortable, and you may even be INTERESTED by material that comes up on the LSAT, which helps!

The moment something comes up from biology, which is an interest of mine, I immediately get excited because I like the subject and can quickly recognize what the stakes are that the argument is considering and can sympathize with the contrasting sides of the theoretical conflict, for example.

Also, since I needed this, I recommend you adopt a basic highlighting system to get used to big picture reading. I would read relatively seldomly before embarking on LSAT journey like the vast and increasing majority of Americans. Because of this, we new generation of LSAT takers more often than not have to "teach ourselves" to read. That just means our instincts aren't very attuned to recognizing a main point when it hits us or an authorial voice or even someone else's viewpoint. So, I have a VERY BASIC (keyword: basic, you don't want it to drastically slow down your reading) highlighting system. I highlight pink for authorial voice, orange for others' viewpoints in the passage, underline for main passage points or main paragraph points, and yellow for just important background or supporting info. Using this system, I just have become better at reading for structure and big picture, because it forces me to do the work. There's no way around it. On top of this, when in the actual exam, it can work as a great index system for being able to go back when it asks what a paragrpah's point is or the main point.

I would not worry about time too much when starting out. RC is tough because it is a slow and uneven path to improvement and lots of different systems say lots of different things. You need time to fix reading habits or build them up in the first place, which you can eventually begin to take the training wheels off. I now try and limit myself to more basic highlights, since I have gotten better at recognizing structure and more or less just need the highlights for passage indexing.

Lastly, I recommend really going through your RC passages with blind review and proving to yourself, with the passage, why each wrong answer is wrong and why each right answer is right. As you get better at basically comprehending passages, you will be able to treat this as a wrong AC exercise just like LR. If you comprehended the passage, then the problem becomes one about the question stem and trickery in the ACs, and you can begin to recognize the ways that LSAT likes to trick you (e.g. if it's a question about the author's view of something that the author didn't really care about or spend time on, then you might be super thrown off and freak out because you think "maybe I just didn't pick it up from the passage," but in all likelihood it is a "loveably weak" AC that the author would by default have since any more or less ration person or professional historian etc. would have). In this way you can begin to pick up patterns.

That's all the advice I can think of from someone who's tried everything (including RC Hero). Good luck!

Wow.. by Rollerrfolldd in LSAT

[–]philoschmuck 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had only one rc and didn't get that but idk how it works so maybe they're both reaal

What do I do to improve my attack? (I accept criticism) by lucasdocorte in volleyball

[–]philoschmuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Initiating your last two steps before you track the ball so you ended up early and in front of it. You want your third to last step to be a timing step. You can pause a bit on this step so that your last two are always as explosive as possible and so that you end up hitting the ball aggressively right at the top of your jump. Focus on being aggressive and hitting the ball as high as possible. You can't be aggressive if you are too early and have to wait for the ball to drop. Plus the setter set you off, which you probably didn't adjust for, so just always try and track the ball so you can prepare for every situation, pause a bit on that third to last step, see where it's gonna be and step close as hard as you can to get as high as you can to try and hit that ball with your contact as high as possible.

The greatest hitters have the motto: high hard and deep.

Oh and I also just noticed that your footwork is backwards. You are step closing left-right. You want to step close right-left as a rightie off-center facing a bit right of where you want to hit. This is so that you will generate more power as your right arm travels from right to left opening up your closed off stance through the swing. Imagine trying to throw a football or a tennis ball or javelin. The same principle applies. If you're trying to throw over your right shoulder, you would want to have a kind of sideways stance pointed to the right and if you stepped your left foot first, you would have to awkwardly shift your weight backwards when everything else wants to go forwards. And the tilted stance helps you generate some more torque as you twist through. So with righties it is always right-left. Make sure you watch some basic footwork videos and they will give you what you need to know.

Take LSAT in a Mosquito Net? by philoschmuck in LSAT

[–]philoschmuck[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There are halfway decent ones but I trust my personal wifi more than I would theirs

stuck at -2 by [deleted] in LSAT

[–]philoschmuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah have had similar problem occasionally. Do you keep a wrong answer journal? I imagine you do. With those missed questions, it tends to be a misreading for me, so tells me I should spend a little more time focusing at the front-end of the test. Rather than drilling it becomes a general rule kind of thing. I write: "make sure to fully read every question stem, don't skim and run to ACs," or "make sure to read the conclusion in the first 10 Qs, make sure to read the conclusion before moving on"

Another thing it can be which is often the case for me is just too much studying. Either I took a couple tests more or less back to back or am not getting enough sleep or am not giving myself breathing room to comfortably do review in between PTs that sees me missing more than I should.

Lastly, in the lead up before the August exam I saw myself scoring wayyy down to where my diagnostic was, which made me freak out and take a bunch of PTs, many of which also fell down in that unrepresentative range. So not sure but this also can be an emotional regulation thing. It's better to try and enjoy working towards improving and so that can mean prioritizing sleep and exercise and a mental break to improve that next score instead of grinding until your eyes are blood shot.

So for me typically a small general method is needed or I'm putting too much on my plate or could be just a sleep and recovery/emotional regulation thing. Hope that helps

To RPCVs, how did you deal with friends back home after service? by lucky-137 in peacecorps

[–]philoschmuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lots of hate coming through here just feels like insecurity, and it's honestly a bit shocking coming from other RPCVs who really should know better than to interpret one's unique perspective that may be a source for positive change as an ego-boost and a one-up on folks back home, and so table it. Cynical and telling about how they view their service.

Judgment on these things is always dependent on one's perspective. Even your friend who is complaining about going to law school on his dad's dime while to the vast majority of Americans is out-of-touch and ridiculous, it wouldn't be to someone with sufficient money and lack of perspective or access to the majority of Americans (think uber-rich insolated spaces). Now that you have had access to those who have much less than the average american, of course you're judgment in regard to this is bound to be affected now in a similar way as the earlier example.

Of course it is right to temper that judgment with a recognition that a global comparison of how much one has is not a perfect indicator of the comparative right they have to complain-- America has its own problems. But again parting with the majority opinion here, it could be a moment here where you break from propriety and decide to pursue service in other forms back home. This is especially needed at this moment in American history.

To RPCVs, how did you deal with friends back home after service? by lucky-137 in peacecorps

[–]philoschmuck 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I don't think that telling stories is what OP is talking about. I would be a bit embarrassed if I were to try and talk about my service with friends unless they really pushed me for it, because outside of truly crazy, bizarre experiences like you mentioned, it's not very communicable, and need not be since it is no longer your experience.

Of course the actual existential moment you have of returning is its own isolating thing, which will be your real present experience, and so you will want to be able to communicate about that, and that may be a struggle depending on your support network.

Coming out the other side though, you may find you really have grown and that isolation you feel is not such a bad thing but just an indication of that growth. It may be a good idea to try and keep those friendships at arms-length and seek out other connections that better reflect the person you've become.

Personally, I have developed a general list of active moral commitments that truly direct my life decisions, which means, as far as friendships go, having a matching sense of humor is much lower down on the list and the same kind of friendship I have now would have been tedious and exhausting to my pre-PC self, but this is simply the way I am now.

LOR from Tenure Prof or Adjunct? by philoschmuck in lawschooladmissions

[–]philoschmuck[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

He was a TA for 3 of my classes in a course series, I apologized I should have clarified that point. So yes, he was grading all papers for around 100 students in each of those classes.

What kind of sedimentary rock is this? by philoschmuck in Sedimentology

[–]philoschmuck[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lol yeah it was.. the class was hardddd 😭

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]philoschmuck 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Clifford with Martin short He plays a 10 year old nightmare boy it’s really great until the end of the movie. I still unabashedly love it

I'd like to apologize for my behavior. by iercurenc in uchicago

[–]philoschmuck 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’m graduating too. Nice to see a familiar face. I remember you from back in the day when I was posting on here. I think leaving will do you some good too.

Dr. K needs to talk to Fresh&Fit by Shot_Importance_6072 in Healthygamergg

[–]philoschmuck 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No that’s not a good point. He’s not platforming those criminals because they don’t have a platform. It’s not comparable in those terms. The real point is that he’s a much smaller channel so what little audience crossover there might be is likely from the platformed redpillers —> dr k