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The LSAT Prep Adventures of Cecilia Tsoukalos: Get-to-Know

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Cecilia Tsoukalos is an employee of Blueprint LSAT Preparation’s main office. She is enrolled in one of our spring courses and has agreed to blog about her experience (under a pseudonym, of course). This is her first post.

Greetings, fellow LSAT students! I’ll be writing to you every so often documenting my time spent preparing for the June LSAT.

As many of you will surely agree, it’s difficult trying to juggle real life and preparation for a test that can potentially determine the course for the rest of your life. As a Blueprint staff member it’s part of my job to guide students through the LSAT process and help them understand that the LSAT is totally learnable. The LSAT is about how you think, not what you know.

I decided to give it a go, and on April 1, I officially became a Blueprint student. Now the tables have turned and I have to start taking my own advice, from spending the right amount of time on my homework to not freaking out when I whiff on an entire reading comp section. I’m here to chronicle my trials and tribulations (as well as my successes, hopefully), so sharpen your #2 non-mechanical pencils and let’s get started.

Here’s a quick get-to-know-me:

After graduating from a university just outside of Dallas, but a long way from anywhere, I heard the call of Manifest Destiny. “Go west, young (wo)man,” it told me. I was fortunate enough to be hired by Blueprint within two weeks of my move to Los Angeles. I moved to the West Coast knowing that I eventually wanted to attend law school, but was also looking for a hiatus and bit of fun before I entered three grueling years of case study and legal lingo. I would be lying if I said Bob Loblaw wasn’t one of my biggest inspirations.

After a few months of fun in the California sun, it was time to get to work and hit the books. The fateful first day of class arrived and I was well rested for my first LSAT practice exam. After a breakfast comprised of eggs and this video of Nine Inch Nails performing on Dance Party USA in 1989, I was prepared for the day ahead of me.

Part of my job at Blueprint is looking at LSAT questions and proofreading explanations in the books for the curriculum. With such exposure to the material, I figured my first LSAT score wouldn’t be too bad. Little did I know reading over questions and explanations for grammatical errors does not necessarily translate to success on the LSAT. As many of my fellow classmates can agree, my initial LSAT score left much to aspire to.

When I got home after taking my first practice LSAT, I may or may not have kicked back a cocktail to soothe my battered ego. I don’t know anything about logic. I don’t care why Suzy has to show up to the party before Petra but after Rayna. I’m just a marketing major, for crying out loud.

But then I remembered that no one in my class knew anything about the LSAT. And Petra is probably just the type of girl who shows up “fashionably late.” On a daily basis I tell students not to freak out when they see their initial LSAT score and that it’s good to keep in mind that the next two months will completely change your train of thought. After all, the first practice exam is just a way to benchmark progress.

I took my own advice, and with a newfound sense of enthusiasm I showed up to class two days later for lesson one. This class serves to introduce you to the basic concepts of the entire course (no big deal). It’s really important to understand what’s going on here as the rest of the course builds on it. The classes are long, especially for those of us who are juggling school or a job, but a cup of coffee beforehand seems to give me a good boost.

As I’m sure many of you will agree, the LSAT is not the most exciting of materials, but given a great teacher the material all of sudden has life to it. I’m lucky enough to have Jenn Steinberg (I’m sure I’ll have more to say about her in my future posts) as my instructor and for any of you who have taken her class you know there’s rarely a dull moment. We’re not even finished with the first book and already I’ve noticed a difference in my thought process. I find myself pointing out fallacies of causation, reading the fine print and noticing how illogical my roommate’s logic is. Things are coming along well and I’m beginning to understand why C is the sucker choice and B was correct all along. Better watch out, June LSAT, I’m coming for you…