Hello, hello, hello my shining moonbeams, 

It’s me again. I hope you enjoyed my last newsletter as much as I enjoyed Daisy and Kelsey’s rebellion carpool to the Final Rose (but why is Maria not the Bachelorette?????).

In today’s newsletter, I want to live in our feelings. And yes, I realize this is still an LSAT newsletter – but there’s a really good reason to care about your feels.

Emotions are a highly underrated LSAT superpower. 

Back in like 2017, I was tutoring a student named Eugene who was super into neuroscience. He had a PhD and went to lots of conferences. One day, he walked into tutoring and declared:

Eugene: “Ellen, I know why you’re so good at the LSAT.”

Me: “Okay….”

Eugene: “At the conference this weekend, I went to a session on how emotion is the sense most linked to memory. And you are the most emotional person I've ever met.”

Me: “Thank you?” 🫠🫠🫠

Despite my emotions about that comment, Eugene has a point. Emotion is like a color coding system for the human brain. When you feel something deeply it’s like a little red flag that tells your brain, “Remember this! This is important.” Our brain has been throwing up red flags for time immemorial. It’s been essential for our survival.

It’s also essential for your success on the LSAT.

(Speaking of human evolution – If you’re ever asked what your favorite book is in an interview, always say Sapiens. Trust me, it’s his favorite book too  💁🏻‍♀️)

Honing Your Emotional Instrument

Most of my students think that getting a 180 comes down to turning yourself into a robot. Like ideally you should just think in binary code and exhale proof. But shutting off your emotions actually makes you way worse at the LSAT. I know this for a fact. I’ve seen the PTs on propranolol, a beta blocker that affects emotion, to prove it.

But ironically, it’s the student’s emotions that are making them so scared of emotion. Usually, the emotional landscape of an LSAT student is dominated by one thing: fear.

Fear that you don’t understand. Fear that you can’t understand. Fear that you’re just. not. smart. enough. 😔

The emotional war you fight with the LSAT leads to an emotional war with yourself. It feels like your emotions are out to destroy you, so the only choice is to shut them off. And right now, they are hurting you. But they don’t have to. 

If you shut off your emotions, you’re not letting yourself see what’s really there in living color. If you become a robot programmed to look for keywords, you’re telling your brain to focus only on this keyword and ignore everything else. But you can’t break 170 on keywords alone, friend. You’re sabotaging yourself—all because you’re afraid to be a person.. 

Take RC Tone, for example. To answer tone questions, you have to be able to read the author’s feelings (and sometimes there aren’t keywords in the passage to help 😱).If you turn off emotions, how can you know whether the author displays: 

• Detached indifference or tacit endorsement?

• Grudging respect or appreciative advocacy? 

• Noncommittal curiosity or implicit acceptance? 

If you silence your emotions as you work through a passage, you’ll not only silence your own—you’ll silence the author’s. And I repeat: There will not always be keywords to rescue you in RC tone.

Here’s what you need to do: Move through LSAT with a finely tuned emotional instrument. Like a magic cello that’s plucked as you surf the emotional waves 🎻🏄

“But Ellen, I don’t have a finely tuned emotional instrument? What is this surfing cello you speak of??” 

To you, I say: Just go with it, friend. You have plenty of feelings underneath all the stoicism. The core of empathy comes from suffering—and as someone who has lived on this planet, you’ve definitely suffered.

I’ve always thought that one of the reasons I’m so good at LSAT is because of my experiences growing up. From ages six to 11, I very much felt like life was not in my control. I was scared a lot. I felt unsafe a lot. My experiences during this time made me incredibly sensitive—but they also made me disciplined. I learned how to route the enormity of my feelings into a safe place. 

It’s suffering that enables me to approach LSAT with my senses unlocked and cylinders firing: When I LSAT, I’m on high alert, totally tuned in to what is in front of me. My physical senses go away and every impulse is at full blast—and that includes emotional impulses that are derived from the text. The surfing cello.

It’s the darkest moments that open our eyes the widest. Emotions are powerful allies. Let them be your source of strength, not weakness – for LSAT and for life.

In Case You Missed It (ICYMI)

Vids are up, ya’ll! 🧜‍♀️

Here’s one I did recently on timing and practice:

@lsatellen

Ignore what you’ve heard. #lsat #lsatprep #lawtiktok #lsattips

If you want more, head over to TikTok to see some of my newest footage (😂)

And if you’re looking for more on suffering (because why not?), be sure to check out the CEO of Nvidia telling a bunch of Stanford kids that he wishes suffering upon them:  

To relaxing thoughts,

Ellen