Monday, February 7, 2011

Entry 128: Wasps F*cked Up My LSAT

My friend Steve from The LSAT blog has a weekly feature where people write in a "diary" of their LSAT experiences.  He asked me to write one, which I was happy to do.  I realized, though, that this story had to be shared and I have adapted it for this post.  Here goes!

I hate wasps. They are literally the crappiest of all God's creatures. I have thrown babies and old women out of the way as I run shrieking from a single wasp.  I'm a grown man who has gone skydiving, yet I'm afraid of wasps.  Weird.  Here is a chart to give you an idea of where wasps fit in the kingdom of life:

I set aside a little area in my house for full practice tests every Saturday.  It was a calm and peaceful area, surrounded on three walls by 6 foot windows.  A room that had never, ever seen a single wasp.  Until my first practice test.

During my first PT I glanced up at my analog watch to see how I was doing on time and I felt something hit my head and fall off.  I looked on the table and there it was- Waspzilla.  Staring at me.  Almost like he had a message, but his only communication was a slight twitch of his antennae. I freaked out, mashed him with my "10 official LSAT" book, and finished the test with shaking hands.  I gave myself an extra 1 minute to compensate, but I still did lower than average on that particular section.

Everyone laughed when I told them this story, and thought it was strange that a single wasp would attack me on the day of my first full PT. Well, the next Saturday rolled around and guess what?  Another test, another wasp.  True story.  This one was in the window and harder to see, but I'm sure he was looking at me just like the first one. Dumbfounded, I ran to my garage to get one of my (many) cans of Raid and sprayed him down.  Then I checked to see if the corpse of last week's wasp was still around, just to make sure I wasn't dealing with a zombie-wasp.  Nope- there it was.  2 separate wasps.  This was getting weird.


I won't over-dramatize the next 6 weeks, but I promise you that there was a single wasp somewhere in my test room every Saturday for 6 weeks. At first it was frightening, then hilarious, and finally I became suspicious that it had to more than a mere coincidence.  What was the message?  What was the universe trying to tell me?  As test day approached I received a lot of messages on Facebook from people wondering what the wasps were going to do for the big day.  Obviously I wasn't going to be home taking a practice test that Saturday so if they were going to make their move it would have to be Friday night.  I spoke on the phone about this to a lady-friend the Friday night before the test and made a decision:

"If I score a 180, I'm going to renounce my wasp-hating forever and never kill another wasp.  If I score below my 170 average, I'm going to redouble my efforts to slaughter them mercilessly."

As my friend laughed, I swear to everything sacred that a wasp flew at my face.  RIGHT at my face.  I have a witness to this, as the girl I was talking to heard me throw the phone down, scream, run around, and then tell her all about it.  It was at this point that things went from "coincidentally creepy" to "downright f*cking supernatural."  In my 2 years living at my house, I had probably only ever seen 2 wasps other than my LSAT wasps.  I just don't allow them around.  I spray my entire house, yard, and windows down with several cans of Raid at least twice a year.  Statistically it just wasn't possible for me to see a single wasp every week for 2 months.  No way. Though every wasp so far had stared at me or attacked me, I began to see this whole thing as a sign that my test was going to go great.

I took the test and felt very wasp-confident.  My preparation had included over 25 full PTs, many other sections done individually, analysis of every question ever missed, online resources (shout-out to Steve's blog!), and timed tests done under exact test-day procedures.  I left the test as confident as I had ever been.  I realistically expected around my average of 170, but hoped for a game-day boost to 175+.  Four weeks later I received my score... 161.

Son-of-a-b*tching wasps!!

Let me clarify: after studying diligently for months and raising my average to the 98% level, my actual score was as bad as the very first test I took.  With no explanation (well, no explanation that didn't involve supernatural wasps).

I think I hid my disappointment so well because it was hidden beneath a massive layer of genuine shock.  I didn't want to complain and say my score was bad- it wasn't- but it sucked because it surely didn't reflect all of my hard work.  So I vowed to retake it.  Wasps be damned.

I spent the time between October and December with a much lighter study schedule.  I knew I had it already; I just had to sharpen the edges and practice some of the newer tests.  The greatest day of my LSAT career came when I took PT 54 and missed 3.  A 179 (180 is perfect).  And that, ladies and gentlemen, included an extra 5th section from another test where I didn't miss any!  I was on a roll and had no idea why I was scoring so high on PTs.  Then it hit me- I had taken every PT since October somewhere besides my wasp den at home.  What?  Couldn't be.  What the heck was going on here?

I took the test in December, still wasp-free, and scored a 171.  That's right about my average, which is great, and certainly enough to be competitive at top schools.  But now I'm done... no more studying, no more PTs.  And you know what?  I miss it.  I miss the drive, the focus, and the self-efficacy you gain by watching your scores steadily improve.

The study tips that Steve puts on his site are spot-on.   If you read through other diaries and some of Steve's articles you can find the nuts-and-bolts of effective studying.  I could tell you tips like "do a logic game or two every day" but I feel like I would just be re-hashing old advice.  What I can offer you is the wisdom imparted to me from the world's nastiest creatures.

When I got my 161 I was shocked and couldn't come up with a non-wasp explanation.  I was ashamed, disheartened, and defensive.  I felt like I had let myself- and my friends and family- down. I had failed. Then it hit me: I was basing my opinion of myself on my test score.  I was becoming my LSAT score.  One of the simplest of life's lessons had eluded me and I was equating my self-worth with some stupid test.  Some thing outside of myself. This sudden realization helped me let go of the need to be perfect, de-stress, and take LSAT studying on my terms.  My last 3 PTs before the December test were 170, 175, and 179.  I even finished one logic game in under 4 minutes. And, more importantly, I had more fun.

Maybe this is what the wasps were telling me.  Maybe they were guru-wasps that were letting me know that it was my efforts, not my test score, that were a reflection on me.  That, in the end, the LSAT was more for me than for any law school.

Or maybe they just didn't know where I was hiding and I'm going to have to kill them all.

Either way, I'm buying this shirt: 

Remember: if you see any wasps, smash 'em and tell them "CALEB SAYS HI MOTHER F*CKER!"

Caleb "Wasp-killer" Shreves


  1. haha, when I first clicked over, I thought you meant White Anglo Saxon Protestant.

    We had a wasp nest in our backyard when we first moved in, and I refused to go back there until it was taken care of..

  2. Dude, you seriously have no idea how difficult it was for me to read this with the wasp pictures included. I am terrified of them. I've never been stung before, but they're just so mean! And attack for no reason! And they're just so, so terrible.

    But here in NC, our wasps look different. Our wasps are brown. The pictures of your wasps are what we call hornets (or yellow jackets).

  3. Andrew,

    Here, the brown ones are mud dobbers and they're meaner than wasps.


    You may have just found your Yale essay. Forget about the "Why Women Want to Kill Me?" essay. Besides, you'll never find all the answer for that and the research may be dangerous for you.

    This post was perfect. You should include the illustrations in the essay :-) They add so much to the story.

  4. I was always told that mud dobbers looked like wasps but were less mean. NOW I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO BELIEVE!

  5. From Jordan:

    I can appreciate the bottom line - not becoming your LSAT score. I'm just proud of us both because we both slaughtered that bitch, and also both somehow managed not jumping off buildings after our first scores. We're ballers. And fuck wasps."

  6. :)

    I love to learn an important lesson from a series of unfortunate events. Applying yourself and not giving up teaches us alot on who we are, and it's definitely important to know ourselves. I'm happy you made it through, but never, not even for one second believed you couldn't do it. Of course it's about who we are right now, on this day this specific second, but it's also about who we want to become and how willing we are to make it happen.

  7. Ah, and then the which seagull shat on which hat, a posse of friends and a bunch of Lone Star on a sunny afternoon at a bar helped me turn a corner that was LSAT diary worthy ... there's some thread going here!

  8. I don't know if this post made me extra wasp-sensitive, but I heard a suspicious buzzing sound today.

    Wasps can't come out in the dead of winter, right?