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I taught LSAT for a few years, so I practically memorized many of the LR stimuli and RC passages. There is an LR question that I always liked about the French painter Cezanne, something about how he inspired the next generation of impressionist painters. I know very little about art. In fact, much of my knowledge of art is from LSAT material. Anyhow, I was walking through Barnes and Noble one day, and I happened to see a book of Cezanne's art. Normally, I would never pick up a book of artwork, but the very limited knowledge I had of Cezanne from the LSAT question gave me some context that made the book of paintings far more interesting to me than it otherwise would have been.

Anyway, the reason I thought of this today is that I was walking through the library at my law school, and I noticed a display of some art books, one of which featured the art of Lichtenstein. Some of you may know that there was a difficult RC passage about Lichtenstein. The book was fascinating to me. It was interesting to look at his artwork and see the techniques and themes that were discussed in the passage. His comic book style and colors are really intriguing.

I call this phenomenon mental cross-fertilization. If I read a lot and know a lot about a topic, the LSAT questions on that topic seem easy and interesting to me. LIkewise, when I read questions about topics I know nothing about, it stimulates interest and gives me a perspective to investigate that topic away from LSAT. I think the LSAT is extremely interesting, and I'm glad that I continue to find it enlightening so long after I stopped prepping and teaching. Outside knowledge helps one score well on the LSAT, and LSAT prep engenders interest in outside knowledge.

This has happened to me as well.

There was a passage on fractals in a PT, and one day, while flipping through channels, I stopped on PBS and they a very interesting documentary on fractals. I watched most of it. If I had not read that passage, I probably would have skipped the documentary.

JazzOne wrote:I taught LSAT for a few years, so I practically memorized many of the LR stimuli and RC passages. There is an LR question that I always liked about the French painter Cezanne, something about how he inspired the next generation of impressionist painters. I know very little about art. In fact, much of my knowledge of art is from LSAT material. Anyhow, I was walking through Barnes and Noble one day, and I happened to see a book of Cezanne's art. Normally, I would never pick up a book of artwork, but the very limited knowledge I had of Cezanne from the LSAT question gave me some context that made the book of paintings far more interesting to me than it otherwise would have been.

Anyway, the reason I thought of this today is that I was walking through the library at my law school, and I noticed a display of some art books, one of which featured the art of Lichtenstein. Some of you may know that there was a difficult RC passage about Lichtenstein. The book was fascinating to me. It was interesting to look at his artwork and see the techniques and themes that were discussed in the passage. His comic book style and colors are really intriguing.

I call this phenomenon mental cross-fertilization. If I read a lot and know a lot about a topic, the LSAT questions on that topic seem easy and interesting to me. LIkewise, when I read questions about topics I know nothing about, it stimulates interest and gives me a perspective to investigate that topic away from LSAT. I think the LSAT is extremely interesting, and I'm glad that I continue to find it enlightening so long after I stopped prepping and teaching. (1) Outside knowledge helps one score well on the LSAT, and (2) LSAT prep engenders interest in outside knowledge.

(1)

Outside knowledge can also be to one's deteriment, especially if a familiar viewpoint is dissonent or subtley different with one's pre-existing knowledge. In these sorts of circumstances, one might be prone to either ignore the information (ie. "this stuff is wrong, because I've learned otherwise") or overlook the information (ie. "I know this stuff already, skim forward"). Sometimes approaching a passage as a blank slate is more beneficial, although I will say, on the whole, familiarity is more of a plus than a minus.

(2)

Indeed.