August 2022 – Nithin's Blog

Back on my grind

This is about – you guessed it – the LSAT. I just got back to New York. Here’s the progress I’ve made:

Did the logic games section of the LSAT PrepTest 72
- Tried doing a blind review (where you go back and re-do questions you didn’t get to / weren’t confident on during the timed section and review them) but I circled a lot of the answers and didn’t feel like going back through them all. I checked my results and got 11/23 on the timed section (i.e., whatever I completed under 35 minutes). I did most of three games, but didn’t get to the fourth one

Organization is key (LSAT)

Progress so far

Reviewed my worst set of logic games on the practice LSAT (4/6 wrong)
- Observations: look for inferences in the set ups and questions
- Organize well so that you can use work from previous questions on other questions in the same set
Purchased 7Sage and LSAT Premium

Plans

I’m planning on taking a practice test on 8/30 and 9/6
I need to review two other games by 8/30
I need to do one logic games section by 5pm on 8/30 (I picked LSAT PrepTest 72)
- Stretch goal: two logic games sections (with 7sage reviews), and one RC and LR section by 8/30

How I’m feeling

I wish I had given myself more time to study and had started earlier. According to Toggl, I’ve done around 3 hours of study so far. That’s not really enough. If I can hit 20 hours by test day, I think that would be fine. I could also just not study that much and then be fine with whatever score I get – the admission fee is already paid for anyway.

Thinking through trip planning, part 2

In my previous post, I narrowed down my trip options to two itineraries: one was 10 days to London, and 5 days in Spain. Another one would be 10 day sin London, and 11 days in Spain.

The decision between both itineraries rests on whether I want to visit two Spanish regions (the Basque Country and Andalusia) or stick to one region. Another consideration is if I want to spend a full 10 days in London, or if I can shorten that time and travel elsewhere.

To figure this out, I started binge watching some travel videos. Here are some of them:

Thinking through trip planning, part 1

I’m planning a trip to Europe for late September / early October. When I plan trips, I usually just try to book flights and lodging ahead of time, and plan daily activities much closer to the actual trip. Most of the time, I have a loose idea of what I want to do (and that usually takes up less than a day), and then just walk around and let serendipity take care of the rest.

However, earlier trips I’ve planned have been easier than planning this Europe trip. With other trips, I usually only have 7 – 10 days to travel because of how much PTO I can take. In that amount of time, I usually stick to 1 city, with some day or overnight trips, or 2 locations that are close by. Anything more feels more rushed.

I don’t have that same constraint with this trip, since I’m not working and thus don’t need to be back on a particular day. It’s also easier to do multiple cities on trips to Europe. You can generally hit a new city every 3 – 5 days since they’re so close together.

Besides London, there’s no other place that’s “on my bucket list” so to speak, so I can’t use that to narrow down my options. With the relative lack of constraints, there are hundreds of different itineraries that I could build.

I’ve researched travel destinations and recommendations for where to go, but I haven’t seen many people sit down and write out their thought process for how they arrived at a particular travel arrangement. I thought it would be fun to do so, and I’m hoping that other people can benefit from seeing my decision process explicitly laid out.