Hi! -- Hope you are finding the book useful so far --lawstudenthopeful727 wrote:Hey Mike!
I just completed week 1 of the trainer, as well as taking the PT, and I was wondering if you had any suggestions on how to go about reviewing the PT?
As I mentioned in the above post, I think reviewing is an incredibly important part of your study process, and there will be more and more suggestions about review as you go forward in the book. And for most of the pt's that you review, your focus should be on understanding, strategies, (and ultimately) skills, and habits -- however, I think the goals for this first one are a bit different, and I think there are two factors to keep in mind --
1) At the beginning of your prep, you don't have as strong as sense as to what constitutes right and wrong, and you don't have as good a gauge for effective vs ineffective strategies. Evaluating your performance with such limitations put on you makes it much, much tougher for you to see things accuracy, and to focus on the right issues. Later on in your prep, when you have a very clear understanding of what determines right and wrong, and when you have a strong enough sense of possible strategies and such that you are in a position to accurately think about what strategies are most effective for you and why, that's when you can really utilize your review to carefully evaluate strategies and skills and habits --
2) A practical note -- per the trainer schedule, the q's you do as part of your first pt will also show up again as part of your first drill sets -- these drill sets will come after specific instruction that relates to those particular q's, and so at that point you will be much better equipped to be a smart reviewer --
So, add those two things up, and my point is to think about your review of this first test a bit differently than you would other pt's -- keep in mind you will be better able to assess yourself in just a bit, and you'll have more chances (in the drills) to review these very same q's --
Per all the above, I think the best thing to focus on in your review of this PT are the things you found most challenging -- what questions, or games, or passages, or parts of questions, answers, etc. did you struggle with the most? Though at this point you're not in a perfect position (yet) to understand exactly what caused these challenges, or how to best address them, you are still in a perfect position to assess where challenges do exist, and how they feel ("I had no idea how to pick between these two answers" for example).
Keep a record of your experience -- the trainer notebook tools can be useful for this but you can use whatever you'd like --
Then, when you try these q's again in your drills (and again and again, for the ones you feel necessary) -- compare your experience with your notes --
It'll be incredibly satisfying when you come to recognize that you have no problem with some issue that completely flummoxed you earlier, and if you miss the same exact problem for the same exact reason the second time around, that'll be enlightening too. Even just comparing how you wrote about q's -- what issues you focused on for example -- can be helpful --
Most students do not recognize/extract the full cumulative benefit of review -- again, I recommend using this first PT mainly as something against which you can compare your other experiences going forward, so that it'll help you see what you are getting better at, what you are not, and how your thinking is evolving --
Hope that helps -- if you have any follow up or need anything else just let me know -- Mike