Happy long weekend everyone! If you’re studying for the upcoming LSAT, you might find it a little bit difficult to take a day off. This post is meant to help you make the most of studying on Labor Day (while maybe still having some fun). I’m also going to touch briefly on my approach to days off more generally.
Now, before we go any further, please don’t be the person that brings an LSAT book to a Labor Day barbecue. You don’t want to be that person. Also, please don’t be the person who only talks about the LSAT. You don’t want to be that person either. With that said, there are a couple things I would recommend doing to get the most out of your (hopefully) abbreviated studies on Labor Day.

First, I would recommend that you review your performance on the homework and on practice tests. It is getting close enough to the actual test date that you should probably start getting an accurate picture of your strengths and weaknesses, if they’re not already clear to you. For me, I was pretty strong on logical reasoning by this point in the course, but I realized that I was flagging behind a little bit in logic games (because they’re the worst). Obviously, you should stick to the curriculum and make sure that you keep practicing everything. But you should also know to ask questions or shore up any deficiencies in your approach toward certain question types.

Second, try to make sure you’re caught up on the homework. Hopefully, you’ve been completing the homework pretty diligently up to this point. But, if you haven’t, now is a great time to try to make sure you’re where you need to be before proceeding further. At this point, I would imagine that almost all the new material has been presented. The course is going to shift to drilling your comprehension of the methods that have already been introduced. As a result, you should be pretty comfortable with those methods. The best way to get comfortable is to complete the homework and review your results.

Those are the only two suggestions I have for studying today. I am a firm believer in the importance of taking breaks. As the course progresses, and especially in the days immediately preceding the LSAT, you should allow yourself some time off. For me, the last couple weeks of the course were the hardest part of the whole process because I approached them the wrong way. I obsessively took practice tests—one or two per day—leading up to the LSAT. By the end, I had a hard time psyching myself up to get started on the tests and my scores suffered. Consequently, I suffered because I thought my LSAT skills were eroding at the most critical time. All that to say, days off are important and I would recommend utilizing them effectively. You need to let your batteries recharge. Otherwise, you probably won’t get as much out of your study time and, as was the case for me, you’ll probably put yourself through a lot of needless stress.

I am a fairly neurotic person, so I probably studied a lot on Labor Day. Seeing as hindsight is 20/20, I can tell you with completely certainty that I should’ve been less obsessive about it. The LSAT is a cruel, cruel mistress, and you should take opportunities to get away from her for a few hours. Go out and enjoy your life! Just not too much…otherwise studying tomorrow will be pretty rough.