Julia Gourary, incoming 1L, discusses some ideas for managing test anxiety on any exam.

For me, tests have always been accompanied by anxiety: sweaty palms, racing heart, shallow breathing, stomachaches, you name it. It was a rare occurrence if I didn’t feel slightly ill before a big test. Over the years, from high school AP exams to the SAT to college midterms and finals, I’ve learned, if not to eliminate test anxiety, to better manage it.

When it came to the LSAT, which would have a big impact on my law school admissions chances, I knew I had to put all the strategies in my arsenal to work and maybe even develop some new ones. During my first attempt at the test, though, things went sideways in a way I never would have predicted (I was affected by the Great October 2021 Outage). Paradoxically, that experience helped my test anxiety: the worst had already happened, and I had come out the other side. [Read more…]