Candidly Kristen #6 – Life After the LSAT

Hello, hello, friend! If you follow me regularly, you may have heard that I’ve been preparing for the LSAT (law school admissions test). My December graduation is quickly approaching, along with applying for law school! With a hectic spring semester, I dedicated the month of May, post-final-exams, to prepare for the June LSAT.

Everyone prepares for the test differently: some people spend months or a whole year preparing for the test, but many full-time students like me choose a similar study-schedule over the summer. I’m planning to do a full blog post about how I prepared for my first LSAT, so I wanted to take the time today to talk about life post-LSAT.

LSAT studying is no easy task! And it was especially hard to switch gears from studying for final exams to studying for the LSAT. But, I took the test on June 11, and since then I’ve been able to truly relax! Which is such a blessing.

The test itself went smoothly and I did my best, so that’s what counts. It’ll be a few weeks before I get my score back, but I’m hopeful and I’ve done all I can, so no reason to worry now!

Since being home for the summer, studying for the test, having six months left ‘til my college graduation, I’ve had a lot of time to ‘think things over’. Being away from school and the busy-busy-business of college life has given me some healthy perspective on, well, lotsofthings. Mainly, what things were causing unnecessary stress in my life without any additional happiness to show for it.

This is a pretty difficult scale to weigh, especially when you’re a goal-driven perfectionist like myself. What happens when the goals you’re chasing don’t bring the happiness or satisfaction you expected?

That, my friend, is a very scary question to consider.

After finishing this past semester, with one semester of undergrad to go, it felt like I was sort of at this crossroads in my college career.

Did I really want to spend my last semester with the same level of stress of this past semester?

Short answer: no. Not-so-short result: something has to change.

Take it from me, I am not one to give up on my goals. When I set my mind to something, there’s no stopping me.

But when you pile on too many goals at once, things get messy.

I won’t unpack all the philosopher-Kristen revelations on you, and I hope you at least sort-of-understand what I’m trying to say here.

It’s okay to step back and realize you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.

It’s okay to say ‘when’ and decide you have to stop sacrificing your happiness for your great-big-goals.

That’s basically where I’ve found myself. And it was a very interesting to realize all this while preparing for the LSAT. Ultimately, this clarity and perspective gave me the confidence (and faith in God’s plan for me, which I know doesn’t include this level of stress) to cut some of the excess stress and negativity out of my life.

Which was really, really hard.

I’m not ready to share what that actually looked like in my life, but what I want to share is this:

If you’re truly unhappy, it may be time to stop, breaaathe, and evaluate what’s causing all the unhappiness.

If you’re at a crossroads in life, it’s probably time to lift your eyes upward, open your hands to God, and pray for peace in the journey.

If you really want God’s plan for your life, not just your plan for your life, then with certainty, I can assure you things will not always go as you’ve planned.

But that’s life, and God has a funny way of always working things out.