Personal Statement - First Draft

My positive experience with Teach For America has not made tying my two-year stint as a special education math teacher to my law school applications easier. Here is the first draft of my personal statement; since writing it, the entire premise of "salience" has been dropped. However, I hope it will be helpful for readers to see the process through which a personal statement can, and should, grow and change.

When I start writing for any purpose more creative than a research paper--I'd argue that law school personal statements fall in that category--I follow the advice of one of my screenwriting professors: if you're not going to finish it that sitting, stop when you still know exactly how to start the next time.

I knew that this personal statement was going to be on the concept of salience, so I tried to introduce the topic in an interesting way. I often find that if I have an excellent hook, I have a hard time immediately flowing into the meat of the text; knowing this about my writing style, I quickly outlined the potential points to make through the rest of the statement. Although I don't particularly care for the opening or the ultimate direction of this statement, I couldn't move on until I wrote it out of me.

That's another screenwriting tip that I suggest for writing personal statements. Clean and clarify your bad ideas by developing them into full prose. At best, you might surprise yourself and find something good; at worst, you won't try sneaking them into the finished product.

I could define salience prior to teaching math to learning disabled students. I was creative, I was analytical, and I would only be happy if my career required both attributes. I was no longer aspiring to be a film director, settling into a niche of finding and promoting artists and pitches. I reframed the importance of marketing, producing, and distributing works of art so that the concession of not creating them would not seem as important. My definition of saliency was as much one of self-preservation as it was introspective clarity about who I was and where I was capable of going.

Hoping to find a fresh perspective on importance beyond my own life, I went to the Bronx to become the 8^th grade math teacher of 30 special education students. Their concept of saliency was very different from mine. I lived in a constant state of confidence, built from years of supportive parenting, excellent teachers, and opportunity little hindered by anything beyond my attributes and effort. My students had few such reasons for confidence, but clearest to me was the lack of math instruction in the previous two years. Math’s only salient points were confusion, a disconnect from the real world.

I. Salience

a. My positive definition

b. My students negative definition

i. How I addressed that by strengthening skills of summarizing and presenting

ii. Visual, auditory, kinesthetic – reach them however possible, changing mode but not content

II. Salience on micro-level

a. Lesson plans

b. Saliency changes because of readiness

c. Planning for someone else instead of for myself, and being responsible for the performance of others

III. Salience on macro-level

a. Unit plans

b. Data analysis

c. Affecting education reform in my school, in the US

IV. Saliency skills and how they apply to law

a. Backwards planning

b. Components

c. Presentation

What I Did the Week Before the LSAT

I'll limit this post to things LSAT-related, but in general, I'd delay taking on any life decisions or drastically changing your life routine. The week before the LSAT is not a good time to bust out, "We need to talk."

In a nutshell:

9. Test Day
1. Visit the site before the test day
2. Do not practice after Wednesday morning on the week before
3. Do relaxing activities throughout the end of the week
   
4. Sleep ~2 hours more than you usually do
5. Eat breakfast, bring food and drink (caffeine) for break
6. Bring your used pencils and highlighters… should be your friends by now
7. Arrive EARLY
1. Read something before, like the NY Times, to warm up
8. Take one of each section type from the most recent LSAT, check at end of each section
1. Compare your score from when you first took it, and I’ll guarantee that you did better

The weekend prior to my test date, I drove to the test center to make sure I knew exactly how I would get there, where I would park, and where the testing center was in relation to the parking. Trust me, these trivial things will seem monumental if any one of them might make you late to the LSAT. I worked backwards from what time I needed to be at the testing center, gave myself three hours to acclimate, eat breakfast, and warm-up my brain, and travelling time plus 15 minutes for "damage time".

I spent the first part of the week before the LSAT following my normal routine to a tee. I went to the gym in the mornings, I went to every class, and I read the New York Times. If you don't have healthy routines built up by the week before, try abstaining from the more cognitively detrimental ones: arguments with loved ones, drugs/alcohol, sleeping late or not enough, etc.

Since I was in the endurance part of my LSAT training, on Saturdays and Wednesdays I normally took two full LSAT PrepTests in a single sitting. I decided that preparing for a longer time than the actual LSAT was the best way to make sure that I was not going to wilt in the 5th section like I did the first time.

However, that last week I gave myself Wednesday morning off. In general, I don't suggest my clients spend any time with actual sections after Tuesday of the week prior, as your body and mind will be completely rejuvenated for the actual exam.

I spent those last few days thinking happy thoughts while swimming laps or lifting weights. Staying calm and positive, through yoga, meditation, spa getaway, prayer, exercise, etc, is definitely the way to be spending your time this last week before the LSAT.

Also in those days, I printed out a few pages of the June 2007 PrepTest to use as warm-up material the day before. As that was the first modern PrepTest I used in my practice, I felt it would provide a nice full-circle narrative to my LSAT prep. When choosing your own warm-up material, choose one of each section type from a modern LSAT you feel comfortable with, and print out or copy that to use on test day.
After making sure my warm-up materials were taken care of, I planned out my break menu, including healthy foods like apples and granola bars, as well as energy drinks. Obviously, this is personal preference, but if you can stand caffeine, I suggest a tiny bit during the break to bring you through the last two sections.

The night before, I packed up everything I was taking with me into a ziplock bag, including my trusty pencils and highlighters. By now, these objects should be your best friends, and make sure you feel comfortable with them.



I made sure to arrive at the testing site about three hours early. This gave me enough time to settle in a side hallway, eat my breakfast, read the newspaper, and do my LSAT warmup. Reminding myself of how much I had prepared while doing the warmup was incredibly calming; my mind was tuned up and ready for the LSAT, and I went in knowing I was going to do well.

Tutoring - Better way than Craigslist

If you're looking for in-person tutoring for the LSAT, but are not in NYC, we stumbled upon a fine site that helps connect you with experienced tutors in your area. Or, after you're finished with the December LSAT--and you get your 99th percentile score--you might find it helpful to know how to market your new skill. We're still experimenting with a few online sources, but find TutorSource to be more palatable than, say, Craigslist.

Be sure to read these things to look for in an LSAT tutor/class before you commit to anything financially.

An example profile from the site for our head tutor:

Contrapositive - LSAT Delay

The latest Contrapositive is up, and this is the first one from in house. You can probably tell from the xkcd aesthetic.

Sadly, we encounter this sentiment about the LSAT quite often in our tutoring services.

Zen Student Journal -

The following is the latest journal entry from one of our online Zen tutoring clients.

As I mentioned before, one thing I learned from my experience with Zen’s tutoring service is that I cannot and should not try to become a problem-solving automaton. Being machine-like in some aspects, e.g., employing formal logic, may be essential, but in many cases, I feel it’s far more important to maintain a sharp, efficient mind that can always adjust to novel situations, of which I’ve discovered there are plenty on each LSAT.

Part of that “humanizing” endeavor is to take some time off from studying but not become completely idle for long that I would lose the mental edge that I’ve been trying to develop. So during breaks, I’ve been tinkering with some ways to use my LSAT-trained mind on fun tasks without any mental pressure. One such diversion I’ve adopted is “critical pleasure reading.” I would go on quality journalism sites like Slate or Salon like I’ve always done, except when I read new articles or re-read favorite ones, I tend to find the conclusion and accompanying premise(s), if any. Not that I need to force myself in any conscious way; the urge to look at the source material with a critical eye seems to come automatically now. But the materials are more diversely entertaining (since I get to pick what I want to read) and, in a way, more challenging since they are “wild” with their syntax unrefined for test questions, as opposed to the tamed arguments on the LSAT.

Nonogram is another fun way by which I’ve been keeping my brain engaged. It’s a numerical puzzle not unlike Sudoku, but I feel the former is more similar to sequencing games than the latter. Like Sudoku, it’s simple and easy to get started on. Perfect explanations on how to play can be found on Google and/or Wikipedia, but simply put, you are given numbers that tell you how many consecutive filled squares there are in a given row or column. I found myself intuitively finding strategies to know where certain squares must and cannot go, just like on logic games.

Of course, I’m not really in a position to give advice; on the contrary, I’m seeking input from everyone for more good ideas. Anyone with some other mind-jogging secrets? Some good figurative Pennzoil to apply to my cranial motor?