LSAT Lessons from an Ancient Windsurfer
If you go on one of those windsurfing web sites where the seasoned pros give advice to newbies, you see a lot of conversations like this:
Newbie: “I want to learn how to windsurf. I found someone selling a Ten Cate Sprinter windsurfer for $100. Is this a good board for a beginner?”
Pro: “No! That thing is over 30 years old. It will be too hard to learn anything with a board like that.”
So, there I was a few weeks ago, a total beginner who had never windsurfed before, paddling out into the Chesapeake Bay on an old Ten Cate Sprinter windsurfer. Why?It was free. My girlfriend knew that I wanted to learn how to windsurf, and found someone giving the Sprinter away. It had been sitting there in the yard for a couple of days, staring at me.
Day 1
I stare at the Ten Cate Sprinter; the Ten Cate Sprinter stares back.
These old boards are hard to learn on because they’re narrower than newer designs, so it’s difficult to stand on them and you tend to fall off easily. Having gleaned this bit of wisdom from the Internet, I headed out into the bay on the board, without the sail, and just paddled around for a while. Then I sat on the board and just floated around. That’s all I did for about a half an hour: just sat there on the board, drifting, getting used to feeling balanced on it.
Then I stood up. And immediately fell off backwards. I climbed back on and stood up again. And fell off, face first this time.
A little kid’s voice in my head whined, “this is BORING! Go get the sail.” The little kid wanted to be flying across the bay at high speed and jumping over waves like the guys on YouTube.
Learning the basics can be the most difficult part of learning anything. It requires patience. You might not want to spend three hours studying conditional logic, practicing until you can quickly diagram the contrapositive of, “I would never eat at that crappy diner unless it was 3 am and I was drunk,” but if you want to raise your LSAT score up above the 150s, you have to understand conditional logic forwards and backwards.
There might be a voice inside your head saying, “this is BORING! Shouldn’t we be taking another practice test?” No, you shouldn’t be. If you can’t stand up on a windsurfer, you can’t sail it. Likewise:
— understand conditional logic → — get a high LSAT score
Day 2
By the time I had paddled back to shore that first day I was able to stand on the board, at least for a short time, until some passing wave got me wobbly and sent me off to my next splashdown. The following day, after a few more tries, I could stand on the board for as long as I wanted.
It was progress. It felt great. I spent about 20 minutes just standing on the board, letting the feeling of balance settle in as the wind and waves pushed me around.
You know what that feels like, right? It’s like playing that logic game a few more times after you have it figured out, just to “seal in the goodness” and know that you’ve really mastered it. It’s like re-reading a Reading Comp passage after you already understand the scale, and noticing how the author hints at her opinion in the first paragraph, a small detail that you hadn’t noticed before.
Now it was time to push, time for a challenge. I paddled back in and got the sail.
Day 3
As I fell off the board, face first into the sail, I caught myself thinking, “what’s wrong with you? You could do this yesterday. After a few tries you were sailing along nicely. Why can’t you do it today?”
It’s very discouraging when your beginner’s luck runs out. What is “beginner’s luck,” anyway? Why do we sometimes do so well when we first start learning something then suddenly hit a wall? Why do we stop improving all of a sudden, or even start doing worse than when we first started?
If you ask a gambler, a gamer, an athlete, and a psychologist, they might give you four different answers. One thing that beginners and pros often have in common is a lack of concern over how they will perform. In the moment that they’re playing the game, kicking the ball, or solving the problem, they aren’t worried about doing it right. The beginner doesn’t expect to, and the pro knows that she will. They can both focus on what they are doing without the distraction of worrying about doing it “the right way.”
Whether you’re learning a new sport or studying for the LSAT, there are times when you should be analyzing your technique, carefully considering exactly how you are doing things. You do that when you’re first learning something new, like the diagram for a new logic game or the process for a new type of Logical Reasoning problem. You also analyze your work carefully when you go back and review problems that you’ve completed under timed conditions.
But when you’re practicing, like when you’re completing a practice set for homework, or working on a problem in class, or taking a full practice test, you need to stop analyzing every possibility and just act, just do. Let your instincts take over. Be like a beginner – or if you prefer, like a pro. Try new things. Take chances. Be comfortable making mistakes. Then, when you review your work, turn the analyzing part of your mind back on and see what worked, and what didn’t.
The ultimate goal on the LSAT is to answer questions correctly. But the LSAT is also a timed test. The clock is your enemy. To beat it, you need to be efficient. This requires confidence. Answering questions efficiently and confidently is a skill. At some point, you need to start practicing this skill by trusting your first impressions, and letting what you’ve learned guide your decisions without second-guessing yourself.
This doesn’t guarantee that you’ll see constant improvement. There’s no shortcut that will take you from beginner to pro. That will still require work – sometimes, a lot of work. When you’re learning something new, you often learn a great deal right at the start, but you won’t always continue learning at that rate, regardless of your enthusiasm or approach. When your progress suddenly flattens out it can be very disheartening. That’s where persistence becomes important. Persistence is often the thing that determines who becomes a pro, and who doesn’t.
I’d been out on the bay for about an hour, enjoying varying degrees of success with my sail. After one rather spectacular wipeout I was floating in the water, hanging on to the board with my arms. I began feeling rather defeated, and started thinking about the hot shower, the dry clothes, and the tasty meal waiting for me back on dry land. “Screw this,” I thought. “I’m going back to shore.”
There was a voice in my head again. It wasn’t the bored little kid’s voice, but it was still a voice that I recognized.
“Get up,” it said.
This voice was quiet and impassive. It didn’t care how defeated I felt. It never did.
“Get back on the board. You won’t learn anything sitting on shore.”
A minute or so later, as I stood on the board and lifted the sail out of the water, I noticed how easy it was to keep my balance. I wasn’t a pro. I wasn’t even an “intermediate” yet. But I could stand up on the board without even thinking about it. That let me keep my attention focused on what the wind and the sail were doing.
Practice does pay off.
Scott Miller is a Manhattan Prep Instructor based in Washington, D.C. Scott has over 20 years of experience as a teacher and trainer and a love for teaching that has led him to some interesting careers, including skydiving instruction, wildlife sanctuary stewardship, and online computer skills training. Scott worked hard for his 173 LSAT score, and he has as much fun helping people master the challenges of the test as had overcoming those challenges himself. Interested in learning more from Scott? Click here.