LSAT and Admission Links

Apr 16 |11:24

As I run into them, I’ll post interesting or helpful articles, podcasts and videos that I find on the internet.

I recently drove up to Atlanta for the weekend but did not know the University of Florida would be holding their Spring Football game that weekend as well. This made the usual 6.5 hour trip from Tampa to Atlanta into a grueling 9.5 hour trip. It did give me the luxury, though, of downloading all of the available LSAT Logic in Everyday Life podcasts from the Princeton Review. I can’t speak for the in person classes that the Princeton Review holds as I have not attended them, but I do own their review book and have listened to over 7 hours worth of their podcasts. The review book is fairly basic and there are other books that handle tha material in a better fashion. The podcasts, though, can be very helpful to a certain type of prospective LSAT examinee. If you have not taken a Logic course before going into the LSAT or are having trouble translating LSAT-based logical reasoning into word problems or vice-versa, then the LSAT in Everyday Life podcasts might be helpful to you. In the podcasts, the caster picks a contemporary event and breaks down the logic behind the arguments into LSAT-related terms. If anything, it is a good lesson in repetition to alleviate all personal biases from your LSAT answers. It is noted in every podcasts that you should reject any personal feelings on the subject and deal strictly with the material presented to you by the LSAT questions and answers. This may seem like a small problem but it is fairly easy to fall into this trap if you are not careful.

I also found an article published the other day by US News entitled “How to Get In: Cornell University.” It seems there might be a series of these, but this one was the most recently published and the Cornell admissions representative was fairly honest in his or her replies. It is a short read, but I reccomend anyone who is considering applying to a university of their caliber to give it a complete read.

 

LSATs, Car Accidents and Money… Oh My.

Apr 15 |19:46

Well, it has been less than a couple hours and I am already here posting a mini-rant. That bodes well for readers, but I’m a little concerned about the future of my sanity.

After finishing my initial post at work, I left and headed to a local sandwich shop to pickup lunch. I was excited to have finally started blogging and it genuinely felt good to have a new medium in which I could write and express ideas.

I picked up my order and stepped into my car. I began to pull out when I saw a white Lexus backing up out of a handicapped spot. She had decided to start pulling out after me, but I yielded on principle and stopped my car. I assumed she would see my car and straighten out her car… instead, she accelerated and continued to turn her car towards mine. I honked my horn and tried to put the car into drive to avoid her, but I was too late. She backed into my right rear panel and I let out a sigh of frustration that has come to define these past few months.

I stepped out of the car and began conversing with the woman who backed into my car. That is when I noticed something that angered me to my core: she not only was completely ambulatory, but she did not even have a handicapped tag/sticker/hang tag on her car. I guess she decided that not only did common courtesy not apply to her but neither did the laws of physics. If you are just going to park in a handicap spot without a tag, you are a jerk. If you are going to park in a handicap spot and back up into people’s property while you aren’t paying attention, then you should be removed from society.

We exchanged information, I took down the information for the sole witness to the event and we headed our separate directions. While I whole-heatedly believe that I was not at fault, I am fully prepared for this being construed as such. It is going to be she,  her husband and their fancy Lexus versus me and the Papa John’s delivery man’s word. I am hoping that having a neutral witness to the situation on my side, I’ll fair better than I would without him. If for whatever reason you are reading this, Pizza Delivery Guy, thank you for being honest and for being willing to give a statement.

I had hoped to order the Blueprint Prep LSAT review materials in time to review them before the June 2010 LSAT, but I am hesitant to do so with this potential financial ordeal looming. Luckily, my car nor her car is damaged to the point of being immobile, but I don’t like unresolved situations like this lingering in a pending state. Having to work to pay for rent, utilities, car, insurance and school does not leave an abundance of funds for auxiliary spending. I know, it could be far worse and I can’t try to pretend like I have it as hard as some people do. I have a secure job and I don’t have any insurmountable debts/expenses, but it does affect me when it comes to things like needing an extra $1000 to order educational materials.

I am already cutting it far too close to the June exam to go through the materials. It’s not that I haven’t been studying for months at this point, but I would have enjoyed being able to go through them all in a timely matter to adsorb the materials a little more concretely. If I had an LSAT-anxiety-o-meter, it would be approaching the “Warning” or “Danger” sections of the meter. My job can be quite stressful and with the semester coming to a close, things are only getting more intense.

We’ll see how this all turns out. I still plan to order the LSAT prep materials around the end of the month and hopefully I’ll have time to adaquately review them.

 

Post IV: A New Hope

Apr 15 |16:28

As this is my first official post on this blog that was not entitled “Test” or “Am I doing this right?,” I have decided I should take this time to welcome readers to the site and explain a little about what I will, hopefully, be doing on this blog.

My name is Ryan Seay and I will be blogging on this site about my successes and failures during what will likely be an interesting and episodic journey towards a law degree. I have spent the past seven or eight years of my life as a manager in the music/entertainment industry. During that time, I have been lucky enough to serve in several different capacities with recording studios, record labels, music venues and touring musicians;  I have worked with some incredible people/musicians and most importantly have come to call some of them friends.

I have been working full-time for almost a decade and have taken classes at the University of South Florida (Go Bulls!) throughout that stint. Certain jobs during my career path have made that task nearly impossible and some have made it a manageable task at best. Lately, though, I have found more opportunities to physically attend class as opposed to my previous norm of frantically submitting an online quiz from my cellphone while traveling from Virginia to Michigan while half-sleeping in a bunk bed that we constructed in the back of a Ford E-350 van. This new found luxury has afforded me the great honor of nearing the completion of my undergrad degree.

With the completion of said degree, I am tasked with answering the question that almost all graduates find themselves faced with at some point in their life:

So… what do I do next?

Ever since I was young, I have been exhaustively informed that I would make a competent and exemplary lawyer. Throughout my younger years, I tried my best to ignore these prophetic callings, but I find that I can no longer shun these desires. Which leads me to this site and consequently, this journey.

As I said before, I have been immensely lucky to have had meaningful and in depth conversations with artists and musicians during very different points in their careers. Some of them are just beginning to get started, some of them have secured their first record deal and some of them are multi-platinum musicians working on their sixth and seventh albums.

These times spent in the industry have lent me invaluable knowledge in the form of good, bad and horrible experiences. I can not honestly say, though, that I would have done anything differently if I was given the opportunity to do so. Even the bad experiences have taught me so much and have made me the person I am today.

I know that this post is a little lengthy and I won’t allow it to continue too much longer, but I wanted to just briefly touch on what type of blog this will be.

I have been blogging on and off in one form or another for the past 15 years and this will most likely not be like the majority of blogs you have read. As you can most likely surmise from the title of this blog, I am nerd. This site will be a combination of rants, links, advice, tales of adventures, sob stories, photos and videos that, collectively, will catalog my life over the next half-decade.

I welcome you all to join me and chime in with your thoughts on my posts. It should be an interesting trip and hopefully an even better read.

 

About Padawan

Padawan (pa'de-wan)

1. (n.) An apprentice who undergoes intensive training under a learned Jedi Knight. In many cases, the apprentice is referred to as a young padawan.

--from unwords.com

 

Contact: ryan@padawanlaw.com

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