divine angst

Last night, while I watched Scrubs (the best half hour of comedy on, by the way), the local weatherguy popped up at every commercial break to tell us that “we’ve got a cold front comin’ in, in about 24 hours, so get ready!” Seriously, I heard the same phrase no fewer than eight times last night.

Well, that cold front is apparently coming in now. Mind you, “cold” is a bit of an extreme term for this wave of air; “cool” might be appropriate, though probably still stretching it a bit.

What is noticeable is the rain—buckets of water pouring down outside—and the definite increase in my itchy-throat level. I am supposed to go to choir tonight and had been debating showing up anyway. Methinks the weather gives me another excuse to beg off. (I can’t really sing tonight anyway; four days in smoky Vegas left me with little vocal nuance besides a semi-sexy semi-rasp.)

It’s just been a wretched-ish 24 hours for me—my grandfather had a TIA Monday night and may not be able to travel to our family reunion this weekend; last night after work, my car’s battery decided that 18 months was a long enough life and I had to have it replaced this morning. I have no voice, it’s raining, my office is (for the first time in seven months) hot, and I’m tired.

Not to whine or anything, because my bad day is certainly peanuts compared to almost anyone else’s bad day. I just don’t feel particularly up to being around people tonight, especially when I likely won’t have much to do but sit and listen.

Here’s my question:

Is the LSACD on the Web worth the money and the hassle?

The cost is $54, which isn’t high and I can afford it. But it only works on PCs, and I have a Mac at work and a Mac at home. I do not have VirtualPC. But we also have PCs at home—three at last count, plus a laptop. So I could work on my apps at home on one of those machines. But that’s inconvenient to me and to my husband, who is usually on at least two of those machines in the evening.

Those of you who’ve used the service, how much time would you say it saved you? What information ends up being universal? How much other information did you have to fill in for each individual application?

Because if the only things that carry over across the board are the basics, like name, address, and phone, it’s probably not worth the money OR hassle for me since I’ll have to fill in all the other information for each application anyway—and I’d have to do this on a PC. Most of the schools I’m applying to have electronic applications, so it’s not like I’m filling in anything by hand.

Tell me what you think.

I just found out that [Big Unnamed State University] is holding a law fair TODAY from 45 minutes ago until 3 pm.

So the great debate is, do I try to go? It’s a hassle to go down there and park, and I’m not sure what I’d do besides walk around and grab marketing materials from booths. My time would also be limited to my lunch hour, which means, given 10-15 minutes for travel in either direction, I’d have roughly 30 minutes of actually being at the thing.

Still, I feel I should go, if only to get a feel for some of the schools I’m looking at, for their personalities.

Blargh.

Update: I went. I grabbed some marketing materials, asked the guy from Northwestern about the interview thing (getting to Chicago=hard), and chatted with the guy from Chicago about quality of life issues. Georgetown wasn’t there; GW lady was swamped, so my questions about the commute between Baltimore and DC will have to wait.

I finished my personal statement. Oh joy!

Vegas was fun. I lost all the money I gambled with, but enjoyed watching two friends kick some serious ass on the slot machines. I know, how can you kick ass on a slot machine? I can’t really answer that question, but these two girls managed. One put five bucks into a machine and ten minutes later had a C-note. Damn!

Today’s interesting factoid that I did not know (from the New York Times):

This year is the 50th anniversary of the first successful human organ transplant.

I had no idea. Organ transplants have become so commonplace that I tend to forget this is relatively new technology. We’re awfully jaded about transplants, to the extent that when tragedies happen and the surgeries aren’t successful, we get very upset with the doctors. (I’m thinking of the gentleman who died after donating part of his liver to his brother. I believe his family sued the hospital for wrongful death.) The fact is, organ transplants are still pretty damn miraculous. Medical technology never ceases to amaze me. Oh, yes, and the rest of that article is pretty interesting.

Lastly, in memoriam: Christopher Reeve, Jaques Derrida, and the University of Texas Longhorns’ chance at the national championship.

I’ll be in Vegas for four days, so expect no updates over the weekend.

Enjoy the weekend, duckies.

Hooray! LSAC has received the missing transcript! Cause for great celebration and rejoicing.

Update: It looks like Janine knows why: blogs are magic.

Last night I had the time and energy to clean my house. Not the whole thing, but lots of it. I produced three bags of garbage, scrubbed the bathtub and two toilets, and blazed through three loads of laundry. I did some other stuff, too.

I looked around at my life yesterday and realized that the LSAT had turned me into a grubby, grouchy, messy mess of a woman. I didn’t realize it while it was going on, but upon reflection, I see how gross I let things get while I studied. I’ve said it before—I am a good test taker. But something about the enormity of the LSAT, the “this affects the direction of your whole second career because it determines where you get into law school and where you get into law school determines how seriously people take you when you want to do XYZ with your JD” just turned me into a slobbering, anxiety-ridden mess.

Oh, not really. But close. I had just enough mental capacity to come to work and do my job and then go study for the LSAT. No room for cleaning. No room for personal productivity. I haven’t had my hair cut in months. I’ve been avoiding looking at my roots because I know I need a touchup on my color, but I haven’t really felt “up to” going to the salon. I need a manicure and a massage. I need to read some more good fiction. I need to not waste hours in front of the TV because I can’t remember what else I’m supposed to be doing.

I haven’t been able to do those things for about two months now. But…IT’S OVER! Hallelujah, rock the world, praise to [deity]! Last night’s cleaning frenzy was the beginning of my personal renewal, I think. I hope.

So the next act of personal celebration and victory will be a long-planned vacation this weekend to Las Vegas. It’s been nice knowing, as I buried myself in the LSAT, that I had this break planned. Four days in the City of Sin. :::sigh::: What a delightful prospect.

Something’s going on here. I’ve been hammering away at my personal statement, kneading and reworking things, and it’s getting better and better.

So why did it sit on my back burner for so long?

One of two things has caused this remarkable transformation:

1) the LSAT is over and my brain knows this.

or

2) the last vestiges of the evil project that I completed at work two weeks ago (and didn’t really post about because I was too preoccupied with the LSAT) have finally leeched from my blood.

Either way, I feel like I’m back in the writing saddle. Thank God, because I was starting to worry that I’d lost my touch. Since a big portion of my statement is about writing, losing my touch would have been a major problem.

I have been religiously checking my LSDAS status online lately, since I (finally) requested transcripts from two schools I attended post-bachelor’s. My academic summary won’t be complete until these transcripts are received and processed, and I am eager to have that part of LSDAS out of the way.

I ordered these two transcripts on the same day—September 22. One of them has been received and processed. The other hasn’t even been received. So I called that school this morning, since my check has cleared and they obviously have to have done something about the transcript.

Yes, they say, we sent it, to the address on the transcript request form, and we sent it on the 22nd.

But, then, why has LSAC not received it yet? What is the delay? This is holding up things, at least partially because, when I signed up for LSDAS, I listed the courses taken at these two schools as “undergraduate” because they were undergraduate level. Apparently, LSAC counts them as “graduate” because they were completed post-bachelor’s degree.

So my little mistake is what is really holding up my academic summary—if LSAC knew the courses were post-bachelor’s, they would have created my academic summary already, and I wouldn’t be worried about what will happen if they don’t receive this transcript before I am ready to start sending applications.

Argh. All signs point to me having to write another check, fill out another transcript request form, and this time pay for FedExing so I know the thing will be received. I suspect the original transcript was sent to the wrong address or something similar, and just hasn’t been returned yet.

So here I am, back at work, realizing that I don’t have to go to the local coffeehouse this evening to run through practice LSAT sections. I have errands to run, and I can actually run them without feeling like a slacker. I have a personal statement to finish, and now I have time to work on it.

Oddly, I found I could not study effectively for the LSAT at home, but I find I can’t really write effectively anywhere BUT home (and work, but my work computer and my home computer are corrollaries, really). So tonight, I’ll go home and pound away at the ol’ personal statement. I’m on draft 2.x and my continuity needs some serious work. Transitions, really.

I wish I could write my statement as a series of lists, since, as Ambivalent Imbroglio so correctly states, “Lists make it easy to jump from topic to topic w/out transitions or excuses or explanations.” That is exactly what I need in my statement—an easy way to present a bunch of information without needing to do any explaning or transitioning, or, well, any real writing. ::::sigh:::: I usually like writing, but this personal statement thing may convince me I don’t.

So the LSAT is over.

My test administration took almost exactly five hours, from check-in to get-the-hell-outta-there. I feel pretty confident about the test—nothing seemed particularly difficult or unfamiliar. I was lucky to get a reading comprehension section for my experimental section; I just don’t know which one of the reading comps will count since I had them both in a row in the first half of the test.

My proctor was sort of odd—she was obviously unused to reading aloud and often stumbled while reading the instructions. She was also pretty snappy with the fellow helping her out, at one point snapping her fingers sharply and pointing at him to pull the room door shut. We had one clown in the room who didn’t listen to instructions well and when he began writing the “I certify that..” statement on his answer sheet before she’d instructed us to, she got a little pissy.

Anyway, it’s over and done with, and I am pleased. I feel that I did as well as I could have done—I don’t feel like I needed to study more or take more practice tests. I think my score will pretty accurately reflect my abilities on the LSAT. (Note that I say “on the LSAT,” since I’m not convinced the LSAT measures anything but how well you understand the LSAT.)

I’d thought about making this post a recap of what I did to prepare for the test, but as I began writing it, I saw how terribly boring such a post would be. So instead of including a long narrative about my prep, I’ll give just a little recap:

I did not take a prep course because I am cheap and believe prep courses are a waste of money. This is my opinion and my opinion only, so don’t take offense if you took a prep test to good effect. I just can’t justify it, mostly because, again, I am cheap.

I used the Logic Games Bible to learn about games, since I bombed the games on my first diagnostic.

I also used Kaplan 180 to get further practice on games and some insight into Logical Reasoning. (Once I felt I’d improved as much as possible on games, I went to my next worst section, Logical Reasoning.) Kaplan 180 is actually a pretty good book for getting extra practice. But it’s not a good book for someone just starting out—there’s a lot of presumed knowledge in the writing of it.

I only took 8 practice tests, and my average score was not terrific. But my score tracked upwards over time, enough that I feel I did well enough today to get into a least some of my target schools.

I can’t recommend my approach to everyone, or even anyone. I am a good test taker, and my score on first practice test was high enough to get me into many schools. But because of my particular geographic restraints on where I go to law school, and my desire to make myself as marketable nationwide as possible after law school (so I can go where my husband needs to go if he has obligations to fulfill for his degree, etc.), I knew I needed to do better. As I said, though, I am cheap, so I went the self-study route. It won’t work for everyone.

One final note: I am sort of on the non-trad cusp—I’ve been out long enough to have a career and a life, and law school was never in my “master plan.” But I haven’t been out long enough to be really “non-traditional”—I’m only a few years older than most law schools’ students’ average age. At any rate, I felt sort of odd taking the LSAT today, as several college students were chatting with me about things, clearly assuming I was still in college. (I look really young for my age, and in fact was carded tonight at dinner. It doesn’t really upset me, but it’s a fact of life that I often look twelve.) I don’t know where that observation was going, it’s just an observation. There were two older gentlemen in my test room, but no older women. I wonder what statistics there are on non-traditional women in law school—how many there are, whether or not they have kids and prior careers, etc. It’s just something I’d be interested in seeing.

Update: I forgot to mention that my wonderful husband bought me good-luck flowers last night. They smell like honeysuckle and are in such lovely fall colors. :::::sigh:::: he’s a peach.

By this time tomorrow, I will have completed the LSAT. I (hopefully) will have celebrated this fact with some cold beer and good food.

I also let it slip today at work that I am taking the LSAT tomorrow—in front of my boss, who seemed very excited for me. I mumbled something about a letter of recommendation and he nodded, although I can’t promise he actually heard and understood what I was saying since we were at an office party at the time.

So. Things are progressing. Lalalala.

Long post in the works about the LSAT, prep, and all the other stuff.