In which Gulawger improves by 30+ points on the LSAT.

Okay so part of the motivation behind starting this blog is that I've been in equal parts assisted, inspired, and terrified by the LSAT experience testimonies of  law student blogs that I've read during the course of my own personal LSAT preparation/law school application process. I was so inspired/shaken to the core that I  would like to do the same for others. Let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time in 2007, there was a beautiful Ivy League undergraduate princess who signed up to try to slay the evil LSAT dragon. This regal princess was a rising senior living and working in the kingdom of Manhattan for the summer. She was having F-U-N and started dating a laid-back Brooklyn hipster prince. To her, this LSAT dragon was no monster! "I'm smart! I'm a great standardized tester!" she thought, "It will be like the SAT when I just showed up without even my own pencil and got a score of which all the court was proud!" A sage elder had advised her to enroll in a Kaplan LSAT Prep class, for, the sage one warned, this was a formidable foe of a beast and mercenary assistance would be of vital aid. The princess sat in an auditorium with 75 other aspiring LSAT slayers two nights a week, yawning, twirling her hair, jeering at her daft classmates and their asinine questions in her head, and running with untouched homework assignments in tow toward her valiant steed, the L train, for her journey onward to her prince awaiting in fair Williamsburg. After a few weeks, the princess deigned not to attend class. In fact, she stopped thinking about the reality of the LSAT dragon at all. Summer ended. The princess returned to start her senior year, her hipster prince revealed himself as merely an incompetent yeoman, and suddenly the date of fighting the LSAT dragon presented itself as only 3 weeks away. In the chateau library, the princess toiled for hours under stacks and stacks of class books and LSAT books. Kind of..The charms of the last year at the ye olde pub dazzled her nightly, and the fair maiden soon realized she did not understand anything about the LSAT beast. A practice test revealed the worst. Over 50% of aspiring slayers would fare better. "This cannot be," said she. The princess tried again. Her score decreased by 2 points and her kingdom was covered in ominous shadow. The maiden panicked. She screamed into the night sky from atop her high castle balcony. She cancelled her spot for trying to slay the September LSAT dragon immediately. 

Isn't this story truly bone-chilling? Truly unsettling, right? SPOILER ALERT (NSFW): This regal princess was I, and Gulawger now I am. I'm not quite sure what I was thinking. Actually, that's a lie. I was thinking almost nothing. If my brain were attached to one of those monitors on a medical drama, there would be hardly a beep to be heard. I didn't respect the beast and my frightening practice test scores basically scrawled my grim reality in animal blood on the wall. A good LSAT score was not going to come without actually, legitimately, not half-assed, trying. 


The fall semester of senior year trickled by and I decided to sign up for the June 2008 LSAT. I have no idea why I thought I'd have enough time to study and also care about the grades that would forever appear on my transcript, but I did. In the mean time, I applied to a program to teach English in France for the next year. "I'll just take the LSAT in June, do wonderfully, and apply to law school from France," I thought to myself. Surprise, surprise, I didn't even crack a book until May when I graduated. "Ain't gonna happen," I think were my exact words after 30 minutes of looking over the mountain of unanswered Kaplan workbook questions. Then I did the obvious and booked a two month backpacking trip and then moved immediately to France. I made a mental oath not to think about the path to law school during my time there, and for the most part succeeded... until I moved back home.

Scene changes back to Gulawger's house in the summer of 2009. Feeling re-focused. Newly confident. Sign up immediately for a TestMasters course. Kaplan was too gimmicky for me, so I switched. At the time I haven't really spoken, listened to, or read English in over 9 months. Take my first diagnostic test on the first day of class. ::sound of nuclear bomb falling and liquidating the Earth:: Yeah, that bad. Even worse than my 2 practice tests the year before when I cared way less about the test. 10 points worse to be exact. That night I drank a bottle of wine alone and reached a mental crossroads. Either really study and work for this or just fuckin forget about it already. I chose option A. Unemployed and with nothing but time on my hands, I started working my ass off. Did all of the homework. Went through all of said homework and more importantly, worked through everything a second time to understand why I got questions right and why I got questions wrong. This took frequent mental health breaks and a lot of time. Next diagnostic test 3 weeks later, 10 point improvement. Drank another bottle of wine alone. Decided to keep the faith and keep on truckin. Next diagnostic test 2 weeks later, 10 point improvement over Diagnostic 1. 


Finally, I felt on track and like I actually understood the logic. I became a wolverine on a feeding frenzy and started creeping toward my goal score about a month before the September test. I actually hit my goal score 3 days before. In retrospect, that wasn't really a good enough indicator that I was ready to hit a home run on test day, but at the time I was AMPED. The way I felt on test day is fodder for a different post, so I'll leave that be for now, but it came and went. Felt good. 3 weeks later, I see that my score was ehhhhh okay good. I was devastated. I happened to be riding the escalator at Penn Station in New York going to visit some college friends when I received the e-mail from LSAC. Saw the three digit number, put my phone back in my bag, and calmly decided that I deserved to go an a short bender. That night I drank many bottles of wine/vodka/sewer water, but this time in sympathetic company. The next morning I got talked into/forcibly dressed in men's collegiate rowing swag/physically dragged to a day of drinking heavily and pretending to watch some horse races while falling in mud and sprawling in self-pity on decorative bails of hay. Self-pity party continued for another 2 weeks until I made the decision to sign up for round 2 with the December LSAT. I had to erase all the hours and hours and hours of work I put into my TestMasters workbooks and I actually caused friction blisters on my hands. Partly because I was erasing in a rage blackout fury and partly because there were hundreds and hundreds of pages that needed to be scrubbed completely clean in order to start anew. Mental anguish! Ennui! Despair! I also did about 15 practice tests between the start of October and the end of November, and finally I started to score consistently THIRTY TWO or more points better than I had on my most bottom of the soul-scraping barrel of a diagnostic just 4 months before. Test day (again to be discussed in a later post) came along and I felt great. Test results were released cruelly 3 days after Christmas (that's not to say that I wasn't compulsively checking for a week before, just in case the fully automated system forgot to notify just me). Finally, happiness.


I actually Google searched "possible to score 30 points higher on LSAT?" when I was at the pit of pits, and I write now, here today, saying yes. It is possible. But only after (for me) literal blood, sweat, and tears. And also the shedding of total apathy and false confidence. For some of my friends (now 3Ls at the creme de la creme), the LSAT wasn't a thang. Their brains just worked in ways that ran at least parallel to the test. Not so for me. So if your way of thinking suits the test right away, good for you. Ku-fucking-dos. But if like me, you gotta work for it even though you've never before had to work and fail and work and fail at something academically... there is hope. Soldier on, brave LSAT takers. The Gulawger is living proof that (to borrow the words of the infallible Tim Gunn of Project Runway fame) you can make it work. 

Shaving cream.

My sister and I share a bathroom. In this bathroom, we share a shower. When she is home and I go through the motions of being courteous, I use shampoo or plain soap to shave my legs because I don't care. She, on the other hand, has so many fancy lotions and potions that it is sometimes difficult to resist trying out a free sample. She departed this morning for a collegiate orgy pool party or something, so I felt at liberty to try out her products that she left behind because she obviously wanted me to benefit from them. I spied "Flirty Mango" shaving cream in the shower caddy. 

"Oh! Sounds promising... Seductive fruits of the jungle. Okay, I can work with this," I thought. Wrong. My legs are smooth but they smell like Play-Do. Don't get me wrong, I actually love the smell of Play-Do, but I don't personally want to smell like it. Kind of like how I like the smell of gasoline but also wouldn't spritz it on my wrists and then rub it on my neck. Epic free sample fail.

Magazine day.

Yesterday was magazine day. Meaning, the day that all of my family's weekly magazines are delivered. Lined up next to each other, they paint a strange picture. We have only subscribed to the first three. The rest just... arrive. We've never subscribed; never paid a bill; never knowingly provided an address to which they could be sent. I guess I can thank the total LACK of information sharing privacy regulation on the Internet.


1. The Week (have subscription) 

Almost like VH1's show "Best Week Ever" but more highbrow. Excerpts from the week's best national and international editorials, financial news, some entertainment news, book stuff, travel stuff. Good stuff. Kind of like freebasing current events.

2. Time (have subscription)

An old standard in our household. I'm pretty sure I learned at a ludicrously young age about the wonders of sex (and then subsequently shared with seat mates on the school bus) from the science section. Their parents were maaaaaaaaaad...

3. Lacrosse Magazine (have subscription)

My younger sister plays lacrosse in college. Pretty self-explanatory. I read it sometimes (as an ex-laxer) and am consistently amazed by how shamelessly they repackage the same training/stick skills/equipment advice every single issue. It's like Cosmo for laxers I guess.

Now for the freebies that arrive ghost-like every week:

4. National Geographic Traveler

It's addressed to me. And it's very much appreciated, but how does it get here? Where does it come from? What does it all mean? I mean, I love traveling and have booked fair amounts of airline tickets to foreign lands, so is it the airlines giving away my information? Maybe it's Amtrak. In any case, thank you to whoever you are for violating my privacy because this is a fair trade-off in my opinion.

5. Architectural Digest

This glossy gem is also addressed to me and it arrives once a month unlike its other illegitimate brothers and sisters. The arrival of Architectural Vogue is a real puzzler mostly because its cover price isn't cheap. Nice quality paper, lots and lots of pretty pictures. I'm guessing that signing up to be on an art museum's mailing list is the source of this one. I mean I appreciate architecture, but am confident that I haven't been searching for mountain lodge design ideas or sconce to art installation ratios or what-have-you. In any case, again it's appreciated. Always a treat to read about Gerard Butler's rustic bordello design aesthetic or to ogle at the infinity pool at Bora Bora's most exclusive new hotel. Keep it comin.

6. Entertainment Weekly

Addressed to my mother. This one has been coming for THREE YEARS without a single payment from the Gulawger household. How it found its way to us is less of a mystery. Between Fandango, rottentomatoes, imdb, etc. I'm sure our address leaked out somewhere. Reading it is like eating M&M's. You don't even notice you feel a little sick until you've had too much and it's just too late.

7. Maxim

This one is the most unsettling. It's addressed to my mother as well. I couldn't even begin to trace the information trail from our mailbox to Maxim's headquarters. I guess I appreciate the recommendations for "Best Bro Summer Brews" and the "Badass Book Club." Major downside is forgetting it's sitting on the kitchen table and to see house guests try to process it's presence in a household with two 20+ year old girls, one mother, and one straight-laced, boat shoe wearing father whose idea of a pinup girl is Alison Janney as C.J. Craig in the West Wing. The mystery continues unsolved.

To more Oranje pastures.

Total bummer. USA knocked out by Ghana. By the final 5 minutes of overtime, I was standing/pacing in front of the TV because sitting was too stressful. Defeat does indeed taste bitter. 

I'm not a fickle sports fan, but since my number two choice France flamed out immediately and the USA unfortunately succumbed to the gallant fight, I now throw my support behind (drumroll):

The Netherlands! (cymbal crash)

Besides the fact that their uniforms are objectively awesome, I also have some Dutch friends who would appreciate my moral support. U-S-A! U-S-A! Allez les bleus! Oranje!

Halftime report.

Ghana: 1 USA: 0. Eek.
My spirits are down during halftime, and I find myself really feeling the loss of my favorite French football eye candy. Since he is probably hiding in a hole somewhere along with the rest of his team, let us contemplate these images together and offer a moment of silence for Les Bleus and Yoann Gourcuff.

And now back to Rustenberg where Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger are sitting next to each other, cheering on the US from a luxury box. A surprisingly appropriate American delegation actually.

Elle Woods: A retrospective.

Sooo, I'm definitely sick. Even my eyeballs ache. Fortunately for me, today begins the knock out round of the World Cup, so I shall be entertained and have sudden bursts of adrenaline coursing through my veins all day long--or at least until 4:30 PM. Anyway, due to my baby sneeze disease I was unable to sleep and awoke ridiculously early this morning (5:15 AM) so I had a few hours to kill until Uruguay vs. South Korea. Decided to cruise On Demand and thought it delightfully appropriate that Legally Blonde was about to expire in only 3 days. I haven't seen it in a few years, and certainly not since I started the endless drudgery of LSAT studying and the whole law school application process. I remember liking it. Indeed I remember being entertained. Feeling the sting of Elle's rejection.  Rejoicing with Elle's triumphs. Not this time. My smile faded during the LSAT prep montage, when Elle begins chewing nervously on a pink feathered pencil. Things continued downhill and I felt my eye twitch when her sorority sisters time her Logic Games section with a bedazzled stopwatch while doing Pilates on the floor. Montage continues. On LSAT test day Elle stares quizzically into space, triumphantly grabs the answer out of the air a second later, and returns with vigor to her Scantron. Action skips over the agonizing month-long wait for results. Envelope arrives. Envelope is opened. Dramatic pause. "179!!!!!!!!" Confetti is thrown. Elle is lifted like the academic champion she is upon the shoulders of her Delta Nu sisters... 

"Oh fuck that!"

Yup, that's what I yelled at Reese Witherspoon. Then I promptly turned off the TV and put myself in time-out. 

It's not that I did poorly on the LSAT. I did well. But I worked my ass off to do well. I studied for MONTHS. I took it twice. I got blisters on my hands because I had to go back and erase all the previous months of work I did in my 17 TestMasters workbooks in order to do it all AGAIN. I had nightmares where I had to try to find the logical link between 4 totally nonsensically related sentences. A 40 second montage to sum up that hellish experience was apparently tantamount to a slap in the face at 5:45 in the morning. 

USA vs. Ghana game just started. Brain and emotions narrowed to tunnel vision focused on TV. Will return later. Over and out.

Occupational hazard.

Something traumatic happened to me a few days ago. A baby sneezed directly into my mouth. To recount:

I work for a couple who both happen to be alumnae of my beloved institute of undergraduate study. Offspring total 2 boys. One 10-month old. One 3-year old. The 3-year old has learned that he can use food as quite the power brokering tool and has restricted his list of allowable foodstuffs to: 1) chocolate chip muffins/pancakes/waffles/cookies 2) "white milk" 3) chicken nuggets, though permissible only in the shape of dinosaurs 4) M&M's. Despite this, he weighs about as much as his little brother because he generally only picks ONE of the listed choices as his nourishment for the day. The baby, on the other hand, is quite the gourmand and can pack in more pureed organic produce than Gwyneth Paltrow allots for a typical week. Anyway, I zoomed a spoonful of organic pumpkin and banana toward what I THOUGHT was a smiling mouth. But I was wrong. Dead wrong. Time pixelated into slow motion. I leaned in across the high chair and smiled a big, open-mouth grin too. And then...

Boom. Roasted. I'm no germaphobe, but I already feel the beginning trickles of post-nasal drip that will inevitably lead to a sore throat and general misery. There is also probably more big picture life metaphors that I could draw out of my involvement in this unfortunate event, but I'll leave such soul searching alone for now and just go to Wegman's to buy some tea and honey instead.