The arguments are the vein of my existence. I cannot stand them. I do not like them. They just don't like me.
I don't know. We just don't get along. I think that there's just so many different types and learning the different skills of each type, so like a necessary assumptions versus flaws. Flaws I'm getting a lot better at and identifying the flaw and I find those ones to be easier.
The ones that are definitely more difficult for me are the necessary assumptions and the strength and questions. Those ones for some reason just don't like me. So what would you say is your favorite type? If you'd pick one.
I had to pick. I'd say flaws. Okay, so you like flaw, but you don't like necessary assumption. You don't like strength.
What if I told you that question? We have a little bit of lag. What if the questions I didn't matter nearly as much as people thought it did? And what if flaw and necessary assumption were almost the same thing?
Well, that would be an interesting perspective. It'd be nice, right? Because then it's not about the question type. It's about the gap.
So flaw questions were telling them why they're wrong. We're telling them why they're dumb. We're telling them what have they failed to consider? What have they not bothered to explicitly state?
That right there is flaw versus necessary assumption. Flaw is vulnerable to criticism because they didn't even think of it. Necessary assumption. They simply haven't bothered to lay out the underlying assumptions they're making.
But in that case, the argument might be reasonable. I know you've just joined the course, but one thing I've been doing in class and you can catch up on the previous classes inside the course, I've been doing exactly this. I've been taking one question type and analyzing it from a variety of different perspectives. So let's say you don't like necessary assumption, that's fine.
Let's take a necessary assumption argument and view it as if it were a flaw argument. That's all you've got to do. You can reframe it however you want. That's good to know.
I'm going to write that down if you don't mind. Absolutely, please. I'm actually doing the study plan that you gave me. So I finished games yesterday and I'm on to logical reasoning starting today.
So it's kind of good because it'll give me a solid week to kind of get through everything. Games I've noticed in the last week, I'm averaging between one or two wrong per game, which is a lot better than I was. I still want to get higher. I'm on to three games and averaging the one to two are perfect, which is good.
If I can just get that fourth game and get even a couple points out of there, that will help to bring it up, which will be super helpful. Yeah, fantastic. And that sounds like you're doing pretty well there. We want to help you get even better on that.
Is there a certain game type you could identify that is the most problematic type for you right now? Um, initially it was the ordering games, but after taking your course in some of the, like watching the past videos, the one thing I realized I was missing was the chains and that helps so much. That was like a really big gap. And once I realized like, oh, now I know how to do the chains, just go through and count them and see what can fit where and what goes where that made life so much easier.
So now it's just like, okay, we'll just keep drilling them. And then the substitution questions, as you said, like that's definitely the more difficult one. People have a lot of difficulties with it. So now just keep drilling those and trying to do it.
And the other one is, um, there's the addition subtraction questions, which I'm really good at, but the substitution ones I'm like getting hit or miss, but since doing your three step of like identifying, can this keep the variables in the same place? Like, will it mess it up? That has definitely been helpful. And now I'm averaging like out of the five questions that I do have substitution.
There's about two or three right that I'm getting. So that has also been a really big help. Fantastic. I'm really glad to hear you.
You may have seen I have an entire workshop in the course just on rule substitution questions. So you could keep drilling them there using some of the techniques we demoed in that class. But I think for you, I mean, the chain's fantastic, glad you saw progress there. I would just keep working on the grouping games as well, maybe looking into contexts where, for example, matching games, you could make multiple main diagrams where you could do a lot more inferences up front than you may have done up to this point.
But I still think for you, the logical reasoning work in these last few weeks will be even more impactful. So I want you to look at some of those previous workshops we've done recently going through this craft review method, specifically analyzing those questions from different perspectives. There's one class I have in mind in particular, I'm going to send you where we reframe in a variety of different ways. Okay.
That's super helpful. What does your plan look like for the next couple of weeks? Well, I believe that the January I said it's on the 16th, but it's been changing since I did the October and then over when I noticed they keep moving up the dates a bit. So I'm trying to stick with the 16 give or take a few days.
So that gives me about two weeks and then we will see, but I'm also heading back to work this week too on Wednesday. So I took today to more office study and that was to get like the real foundational stuff of the logical reasoning get those two days. I realized the first two days are always the most crucial in the study plan and then the rest are like practicing. So I wanted to get the foundational stuff first and then see what else happens once I get back to work and then trying to like shift that because I think I don't know if you know, but I'm also fairly go to.
So it's just a lot of balancing going on. I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah.
I know it can be tough once the holidays are over and there's more applications loaded up as well. So I'm just hoping to work on the pacing and endurance incredibly important in that lead up to the test and the January LSAT flex, the primary testing dates are the 16th and 17th. They should open up scheduling any day now. So probably tomorrow Wednesday or Thursday you'll get an email about when where you can go in and choose your specific LSAT flex day and time.
Perfect. I'm just hoping because like January is essentially like the last one I can do. The first one I did in October was a total write off for me. I had major anxiety.
It just didn't work out. And I actually got lower than all of my practice tests. And I was really upset about it, but I was like, okay, I still have November and January, November I did do better, but it still wasn't where I wanted to be. And so I'm just hitting when I do the practice test on my own, I'm still hitting about that 150 mark.
But when I do the actual exam, I'm not hitting that. So I'm trying to at least get up there and hit that 150 152 just to try to, you know, and so hopefully with if I just keep practicing when I did the timed exams yesterday, my logic games are now at about 16 out of 23 with three games. So if I can get the fourth game, then that should hopefully give me a couple more points to bump up. Yeah, now with that fourth game, is it that you may not be getting sufficient time for it at all?
Yeah, I think there's that or the other option I noticed like by the time I ended the last practice test yesterday, I got through three games, I had eight minutes to do the last game, but then it's like you start rushing and then that's when things when you're like, okay, you need to actually kind of slow down, get that more accuracy. And then you're like, I can't do it the time. So I'm also running for you. Yeah, it may just be one of those things around taking them all just look down and double check on the initial setup of the game before getting into the questions, but your ability is there.
It's just the question of going in strong for that fourth game. And then maybe there are still some efficiency gains to be made on one of those first three games, for example, conditional chains unlocked a lot of efficiency for you. There may be more to do in terms of overarching strategies you can apply on the first three to get into the fourth game with plenty of time because the fourth game is typically going to be a little bit harder than average. So you want to ideally have more than average time, not less.
Yeah, that's exactly it. And I noticed like I'll do game one, game two, and game four. Game three is always the trickier one for me for some reason. I don't know.
And apparently people I talk to say game three always seems to be more difficult. I don't know why. Sometimes we're getting three is much easier than game four. So like, I don't know.
It's just I always end up doing game one and two. And I guess it just depends on like what you're good at. Yeah, no, it doesn't. Certainly there's some strengths and weaknesses with different game types.
One other question I have for you is around when you went into November, you said you had fixed some of the things from your previous test. Do you feel there are still any elements or weaknesses in your approach that you want to make sure are totally solid for January, aside from what we've discussed so far? I definitely want to work more on my endurance, so to make sure that I can get through, you know, by the time I got into November, I was able to get through four games, but the accuracy was there. I'm getting through three games where the accuracy is much better.
The fourth isn't there. By now it's the logical reasoning. So the arguments I want to make sure that they're more solidified. I'm getting more right.
And there's certain like argument types that I was getting right. Like surprising that I would understand sufficient assumptions better than necessary assumptions. And then I was really good at parallel questions, principal questions, pointed issue questions. So those were where my, you know, points were coming from, but then it's like you get onto the test and you're like, I'm freezing.
I don't know why. So I think I also need to like get out of my head. And I think that's a really big part as well. Yeah.
And that's aside from the content alone, just getting out of your head, not overthinking it too much and trusting yourself. Yeah, exactly. I think in October, you actually came to speak to one of the seminars we're doing with one of these, the Canadian Law School things, speech things. And I was like, oh, Steve is like great.
Like you had a lot of like helpful tips. I subscribed to your newsletter or whatever you want to call it that comes out every couple of days. And I was like, you know, these are helpful tips. I started saving them and going through them.
And then you sent up one recently and was like, Hey, you know, how about how you reach this? I'm like, you know what, I will take all the help that I can get. I just wish that I had connected with you sooner. So I wasn't doing the one month, but at the same time, like in just a week, it's been a big difference.
I'm glad to hear so much. No, of course, I'm really glad to hear my materials been helpful and I'm glad that you've been really taking full advantage of it in the time that you have. So if nothing else for today, we could leave off here, but definitely reach out in these final weeks if there's anything at all that you need. And I'll send you that resource on logical reasoning.
But if there's other things you need or you need me to point in the right direction, I'm happy to do it. Just reach out. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Steve.
I really appreciate it and taking the time today. Of course, you need to have a good one. Thanks for tuning into the show. Please subscribe if you haven't done so already to be notified of new episodes as I release them.
And feel free to reach out if you need anything at all. So you feel with your prep, I'm happy to help however I can. In the meantime, I wish you all the best and take care.