Question/Answer Meta-Structure (Beginner) with Lewis

Excellent. Good choice. Sounds good. Okay.

Oh, is there a December test this year?

They may not offer in December, but January is a fun day. Let me check. I'm not sure score or test dates.

They usually don't offer one in December. I think because of holidays, but let me see. Yeah, so there is no test in December.

There's November and there's January. January is a fine test to take.

And I don't think that is enough. Yeah, I think practice is crucial, especially if you're getting ready to actually take the thing.

But I mean, if you're looking at January, you still have plenty of time. So I think that's a reasonable amount of time to give yourself.

That sounds like a lot, honestly. That sounds like too much. I would expect to burn out. It's possible. If you're doing that, though, you have to mix practice with this kind of stuff, right?

Like you can be in this call for an hour. And that's probably not the most draining thing to do, right?

You know what I mean? But if you're actually seriously doing like LSAT questions, that's very, very draining and requires a lot of focus.

So it's hard to do more than two or three hours of that in day.

Okay. When you do those sections, do you mean like an L.R.

How have they been timed when you've been doing them?

Oh, okay. you have some real distance to go there before you feel comfortable timing. Oh, that's fine. Okay. here's really, if you want like a method here, okay, I can give you one.

So typically when someone's studying, you want to approach this into steps. one, is to get your accuracy where you want it to be untied, okay, then step two is to slowly adjust to timing.

It's a mistake to work on both accuracy and timing at the same time. Now eventually once you've gotten close to where you need to be, you'll just be practicing timed tests and you'll be practicing everything at once and that's okay.

But initially, especially if you're looking for any kind of a significant improvement in your abilities, you don't want timing to be pressuring you.

It's working across purposes with your other goals in my view. By the way, can I just ask you a practical question?

How are you able to join this call? it from the live classes link on the website? That's totally fine.

This session got rescheduled like yesterday something like that. Okay, good. That's fine. I wanted to make sure there wasn't a problem.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so I guess I might to go back to what I was saying to so you want to work backwards from your own goals.

So what are your score goals here?

Okay, so if the goal is 160 and that's a good target.

And I take a lot of notes from you guys and try to learn each person's perspective and all that.

Yes.

Okay, well, that's an interesting goal also. So in that case, the goal would have to be set a little higher, but that's okay.

So at least for a company like, else I have Max, it's maybe possible, I think you would still need to be in the mid one sixties.

I think that might be high enough to be a two hundred and some companies. But I think at least was 70 to be able to do the right thing.

Well, at least one 70 had a good company. It might be, I'm not sure, maybe Princeton Review will hire you, although it's much lower rates.

below that, I'm not sure. But either way, so let's set one goal at time. Okay, let's start with that goal of 160 for schools.

Good. 160, technically, as you know, the raw score required to get a 160. Very a little bit from test to test.

So it isn't totally predictable. It depends on how hard the test is. But so, you know, the ultimate difficulty is.

pretty constant from test to test, but the number might change by one or two. But roughly, we can set a target accuracy here in terms of percent of questions you get right on each section.

So on the most recent test they released, it looks like you need to get a raw score of 58 to get a 160.

That's 58 out of 78. So just looking at what that actually is, it's a calculator. 58 over 78 is okay, about 74 percent.

So you need be getting about 72 to 75 percent of the questions, right?

Okay, yeah, so you Yeah, and an 80% accuracy would give you. I think that makes sense, by the way.

I like that. I would get you probably like a 164 or even a 165, right? And already if you're getting to 80% accuracy, you're getting close to what you need.

Roughly, a 170 is about an 88% accuracy or maybe a 90% accuracy. Something like that, okay? you're already kind of close to where you want to be eventually.

Although, of course, it gets harder and harder to get to get higher accuracy because, you know, you're already doing quite well, and it's unforgiving.

But still, so now you have a little more stuff.

So in terms of number of questions wrong, again, that that varies a little bit, but typically, you can get about eight questions wrong usually, something like that on across all three sections.

It does not include the experimental experimental does not count for just form.

They give you if you're doing it with normal pacing, I get a break. You get one 10 minute break or something after the second section.

So it's a two sections break two sections.

So 70 minutes and then breaks.

Oh, is that true? Yeah, during a break, you probably can't. can't because you're indoors and they won't let you leave.

Yeah, you probably can't do that.

Oh, you could probably sneak a cigarette. Well, because they wait, you leave the room for your break, I think, to go to the bathroom.

might be possible to get from home. But I want to go back your approach here to studying. so I don't think what you need to be practicing right now is the 70 minute marathon thing until your accuracy is close to where you want it to be.

Right? So if you were to oftentimes do a logical reasoning section, how many questions out of 25 or 26 do you think you would get correct right now?

If you gave yourself an hour?

Okay, so that's That's still very far from what you need, until that's 18 or 20, then I don't think you should be worrying about timing at all or endurance, that's way premature.

You got to worry about what it is that they're asking you to do that you're not understanding, right?

Yeah, so try that. Yeah, so you don't know, maybe you already be scoring much harder than you think, in which case that's great, but until you're getting consistently 18, at least 18 of them right, untimed, then I don't think you should even think about anything else.

Once you're doing that, 18, that's still below, so 20, getting 20 out of 25 to be your 80% mark, right?

you want to be, you know, consistently. do be able to do that um timing is always logical reasoning is always number of questions the section number of questions in each logical reasoning is it 23 or 25 so reading comp is always 27 in modern test and logical reasoning is either 25 or 26 every time yeah so that's why I said you know getting at least 20 of them right is basically your 80% line okay yeah now yeah that's about right the same goes for reading comprehension I mean I would be more interested in getting your logical reasoning where it needs to be first because again I think this is the best place to learn and practice certain

course skills, but technically, you should probably apply the same process of reading comprehension. There are some, I guess, subtle differences for reading comprehension, things you want to be extra sort of thinking about or worrying about, right?

Is that time, are we talking about time to runtime?

Okay, so it looks like on time. If you gave yourself an hour, instead of 35 minutes, I think I'll try that today.

Try it and see how it goes, because it may be that you're doing way, way better, and that timing is your

main issue here, or it may be that you're under the comprehension of the underlying materials is not as strong as you think.

It's possible. It could go either way. Until you've done multiple of these untimed, you won't actually know yet what the sort of comprehension points are that you're missing, right?

You need to figure out, okay, where is it that the way you're approaching the test differs from the way they want you to approach the test, basically.

That's the question, okay?

What was the last sentence you said? Oh, I said you need to figure out where the way you are reading or thinking or approaching the test differs from the way they want you to, the test writers, right?

mean, essentially that process. is the process everyone needs to go through to get better. It's even the process I had to go through to get better when I was already scoring 176 plus and I wanted to get to 180, right?

I mean, a while, So when you studied for 176 plus, how many hours did you study and how far did you study like that?

I was just taking full-time practice tests whenever I had three hours available in my day.

I was the only form of studying I ever did. But to be clear, I was already scoring, I think I scored a 177 on my diagnostic day.

Yeah, but it's not because I was just born able to do this. I had a very extensive background that was well-suited to this exam.

That's the truth.

Yeah, I had a pretty extensive math background. I had done a lot of formal logic. I was a analytical philosophy major.

I was also a very practiced... I was very practiced in various forms of argumentation and debate. Like even going back to high school, did mock trial and model UN, and I was involved in this program at my high school called the Washington Seminar, which was basically like very sophisticated sort of political.

Anyway, that was high school. And then in college, I was in the Yale Political Union. I was president of the old political union.

I was very involved in public speaking and argumentation.

The political union. Yale has a... Yale undergrad has a political union. It's like an undergraduate organization that's modeled after the unions at Oxford and in Cambridge, because everything goes as much to the Oxford.

I never did music. I went to Yale undergrad and law school. Really?

Wow.

I also work. I, I, I, I found that about two years ago now, maybe little less, I founded a cyber security nonprofit with a friend of mine.

We're trying to, we're building a cheap and efficient cyber security stack that we can hopefully deploy for small businesses cheaper for free.

Are you aware of that? Yeah, wait, say that one time. Did you refer to CS or something else CISA?

Oh, yeah.

No, no, no, I do. I do know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like a peer to peer stuff.

I know him very well. Oh, really? Oh, you're. You see, I don't know personally, but is he no I speak to him every every two weeks every one week We have two seminars on when does he does their podcast, right?

that is that who you're talking about? Yeah, I do know you're talking. I don't know him personally, but I know Derek harp.

Oh, I am the only Indian in the United States having a degree in terrorism Wow, really amazing.

Oh my God.

Oh my God. That is an intense background story. That's really... That would probably make for a very good colossical essay if you wanted it to.

you. Truly.

How did she die?

In 9-11.

Wow.

She was in the world tracing her.

Wow.

She cried a lot.

Anyway, as well.

Well, you know, I grew up in New York City. I mean, I actually saw that I was in school.

was young. How old was I? 9-11. was like maybe in second grade or something. Maybe in second grade. was like seven or eight.

And I remember they took us out of school and after the first tower was hit and we went downtown too and I actually had a view of the of the of the the of the twin towers from my bedroom window, a little window in the corner of my bed.

I was in my room. saw the second plane hit the second tower. It was kind of crazy. My parents were like watching the news and didn't and man I'm laughing but it was I used to live in New Jersey or sleeping and one of the people from the company called me and the guy was working in the New Jersey division and he said hey your friend is there.

Oh no.

When did this happen?

So what made you decide now that you want to take the house to add and potentially go to wasco?

That is crazy.

Wow. Okay. I see. And that's what you're interested in a lot.

Because you actually destroyed my life.

Wow, okay.

Oh, he's so excited. Makes sense. Okay. Well, that's a wild story. Not just if you're enjoying this as well, so it's no longer just the two of us.

And I realize it's about 30 and I haven't even addressed the topic. So as much as I would love to keep hearing about your background, which is fascinating.

I may, I may transition us now. For at least for at least 20 minutes or something like that to address.

I want to at least. Lay out what a question and answer meta structure is, although I don't know how much There is to say about that.

Um, I'm probably also going to try to pull up the passage here to look at, for no, just you're not late.

Don't worry. This is joining whatever you can. Good to see you. Yeah, these have been some lightly attended ones for September.

I'm not entirely sure why. It's been a lot of busy tutoring, but not a lot of why class action.

Maybe I'm choosing a bad time, uh, to host these. Regardless, I'm also, uh, really no champion, but What was that?

Oh, okay. Sorry. just couldn't hear you. Um, okay. So anyway, but so This is a beginner lesson and meta structures are I've come to appreciate more and more the more tutoring.

I do probably be most important way to try to explain to someone who's Starting out or struggling what it is

is that the reading comprehension requires of that. I'm opening a whiteboard. I want to try to indicate what I've put to the point here, if I can.

So there's an arc here of, well, try to find the best way to say this. So basically, look, there's two different ways you might read.

OK, imagine someone. Imagine I gave you the following side. OK, I'm about to show you 10 random words. And you're going to have five seconds to look at them.

And then after that, I'm going cover them up. And then I'm going wait 10 seconds. And then you're going to to tell me as many of the words as you can remember.

It's like a pure memorization task. Right? Unicorn, skyscraper. for laundry, quarter, mug, this is hard to think of for some reason.

don't know why soda. No, I need more rather than that. It's okay. Wist newspaper. Wow, it's hard to think of random words.

What So like, if someone gave you this, there's no logical. connection between any of these random words, right? Now there are like people who are super good at memorizing a ton of random .

And I don't know you know this, but there are techniques that these guys use to be good at it.

The most famous technique is often called the memory palace. And I believe this is almost universally relied on by people in like memorization competitions.

Alright, are you familiar with the memory palace? You've any idea what I'm talking about here? So basically, yeah, you do now.

Okay, good. So the point I want to get at it, I'll tell you how it works, essentially, they have like, what they are doing is pre-building and allowing

separate structure in their mind, and then what they do to memorize the list is they, they build arbitrary associations between these words and parts of the prebuilt structure.

So like literally they imagine a house or a big palace. And in the front room, there's certain furniture and they're very familiar with their imagined palace because it's always the same one.

And there's like a chandelier here and there's a this and a that and whatever doesn't matter, but they know where it always and they know where it all is relative to each other.

Then so then what they're doing and memorize this is going to unicorn. That's the chandelier skyscraper. That's the first chair by the door laundry.

That's second chair. Okay. And now we're going to the next room like that. Now, why does this help? Well, the thing about this list of facts that makes it hard to remember is they're unconnected to each other.

So you have to just brute force memorize all 10 of these. There's nothing to win. on. So what they're doing is they're using this arbitrary system of association to create structure where there was no structure.

Well, luckily for all of us, reading comprehension is not about memorization at all. The students I work with who struggle the most with reading comm, for them it feels like memorization because when they read the passages they aren't picking up on the logical relations that structure the argument.

They're essentially reading these passages like a laundry list. They just see them as containing a series of disconnected factual claims about the world.

They're not seeing the connections between those claims. And then they all, almost all of my students tell me they think their big problem on logic on reading comprehension I mean is that their retention isn't good enough.

That's what they found. I hear this way more often than you think. So they think that their issue is they're just not retaining all of the information that they read.

But this can't possibly be right. Retention is not the issue. Right, first of all, you only have like 10 minutes to read four paragraphs and then answer the questions on it.

Are you really forgetting what you read in 10 minutes? It doesn't really make sense. But of course, I came to realize why they feel this way.

Because if the passage feels like a laundry list, then retention would be hard, right? So if you feel like the problem you're having, this is a public service method, if you believe the problem you're having on reading comprehension is a problem of retention, then your real problem is that you're fundamentally misunderstanding the task of reading comprehension.

And that's a good thing, not a bad thing. You should be happy to learn this, okay? Retention has very little to do with what this section requires.

I'm not retaining almost anything. I'm not trying to, nor am I struggling to. Okay, and I'm not good at this.

If you showed me this list, I don't know that I would do very well I'm not good at these kind of memory games, but I'm very good at reading comprehension.

So the importance of meta structure This is like our memory. This is like our memory palace. Okay. It's the thing that structures the passage It's the thing that guides you to the priorities here.

What matters? was significant? What was trivial? If you want to be really direct about it, it's your guide to the main point, but it isn't just your guide to the main point.

It's your guide to more than that. So I'll give you two examples of meta structures. One of which will be the one we're supposed to talk about, but I'll talk about the one that makes more sense to me.

This is often called resolving a debate. They want to guess what this meta structure refers to, just from the name.

Well, that's a lame question. I'll start it off and then I'll ask a better question. So essentially in resolving and debate.

Passages. Yeah, exactly does exactly what you said is actually perfect. That's, that's perfect. So the first thing that happens is the author, like you said, the author.

Introduces some.-existing debate. In the literature. And lays out. Both sides. What's called inside A and side B. Okay. And then.

The author goes on. To propose some. kind of solution to the debate, different solutions are possible, including the following.

So my next question is, what are the different ways that you might resolve a debate? This is the more interesting question.

Okay. We've got a bunch of good answers to some justice, so let's go one at a time. So the most obvious one, which you called out correctly, is just take a side, right?

Something like this. Okay, that's the most obvious thing you do take a side. Now, the second thing you say here, which is really good, is synthesis.

Well, you say synthesize the arguments. What exactly do you mean by that? I mean, that is a really good answer, I just want to want to say a little bit more.

Yes, okay. think it was perfect. Show that they can both work together, right? So oftentimes the version of this answer I get from people and you didn't make this mistake, but almost everybody does, is they say, like, maybe the author thinks that both sides have merit.

It's like, well, but then why have they been debating? I mean, they've had each other's throat here, right? It would be like the following about like, well, you know, there's a long way to debate between people who are pro-life on the one hand who think that abortion should be illegal and is murder, and then people who are pro-choice on the other who think it should be legal and a matter of, you know, projecting women's, you know, autonomy or something.

You know, I'm really, I think both sides of this are gonna have some merit. Yeah, okay, but dude, should abortion be legal or not?

Like at some level, right? If they're debating, they presumably think that they're incompatible with each other. So we use it as perfect.

You want to show that they actually are compatible, okay? So I'm gonna refer to this as reconciling both sides, show that they are compatible with each other.

This is the essential point here. Does it remind you of a question type for logical reasons? Isn't it actually?

When it issue may be actually put it issues a good fit in general for the debate meta structure, but how about the reconciliation in particular?

I have something else in mind I can tell you what it's like a paradox question, right? So in a paradox question, they're giving you two claims that seem to be incompatible with each other, but actually they are both true.

So they must be compatible because there's no way that it's a contradiction. So you have to figure out how it is that they can be compatible despite seeming incompatible.

That's kind of the idea here. The two sides of the debate seem incompatible. That's why they're fighting, but really you need some sort of discovery to figure out that they can be reconciled, right?

Okay. And this is one of the more common ways of going, actually. Now you then say something else here that's actually show that the problem is non-existent.

I really like that. We can say this like attack the premise of the question or reframe the question or diffuse the subject or something, right?

Different ways you want to put this, but it's nice. That is probably rarer but a very interesting way of resolving a debate.

It's just to say this whole debate has been, we're only having this debate because we didn't phrase, we didn't frame the question though.

The only other thing I can think, can you think of anything else, more possibility here? We have taking one side over the other.

This is saying both sides are actually right. How about both sides are wrong? But both sides are wrong in and of itself.

I mean, what more would you want out of a paper? If you were a journal editor and someone gave you a paper saying here's a debate and I think both sides are wrong, what would you ask them to give you?

In addition to Now reasons why, yeah, you would want reasons why for all this. They're going to have to justify any claims.

Your own solution. Yeah. Yeah. So, and typically, there's a third way. Oh, it's side C. typically, if they're going to attack both sides, really amounts to saying there's a third way.

So actually, you know what, I shouldn't put that in the parenthetical. That's the main point here. There's the third way.

Okay. In principle, you can even have an interesting paper that doesn't even. necessarily endorse the third way, just points out that it exists, the existence of a third way that was previously not acknowledged is itself sort of worthy of publication, right?

Okay, so this would be the resolving and debate meta structure. Really, there's multiple variants of this. Now, the point of these meta structures is, among other things, you should be able to easily read off the main point.

So, let's go one by one. If the author decided to take a side, side with, for example, side A is right, side B is wrong, what would the main point be of that passage?

Exactly, the main point would be that side A is better than side B, and maybe one or two reasons why, if there are, if gets queer reasons, right?

What if we do the Reconciliation, what's the main point there? Where we just be, that the sides can be reconciled, and why, right?

That they're compatible. Sorry, I could've waited for you to give me the right answer just about the same thing.

Yeah, exactly. the options are be too exclusive. Exactly, and that's the main point then, right? What if he attacks the premise of the question?

Sides to reframe it or something. Well, that the very premise of the argument is faulty, and needs to be reframed, that's the main point.

And maybe also, what he thinks the better framing is, if he gives an alternative, right? What if he says there's a third way?

Well, the main point would be that there's a third way, side C, what if he gives a third way and endorses it?

And it would be that also, that there's a third way and he thinks it's the better way, right? So essentially, the point here is

If you have a grasp of the meta structure of the passage, you shouldn't be getting the main point wrong, and that's already huge, okay?

If you're ever struggling to get even half of the questions right on a passage, it's almost certain that you didn't grasp the meta structure.

Okay, that's what that means. It means you didn't understand what you read as an argument. You may have understood a lot of the very local points that were being made.

You may have understood in this paragraph a very local argument, but you didn't understand how that fit into the overall, broader, bigger picture of the passage.

The meta structure is your guide to that, and that's the most important thing. It'll also, in turn, by the way, be your guide not just to the main point, but also to things like the author's tone and the author's opinion.

First of all, you need to understand the author's tone to know the main point, but more importantly, like... If the author takes the side of side A explicitly, then you should know what answer all the tonal questions, right?

If they suggest the third way, but they don't actually endorse it, and then they just suggest that all three have some merit, and it's unclear which is the best approach, then you'll know that the tone is going to be friendly to all in neutral and non-committal.

And if they reconcile both sides, then you'll know what the tone is there too. So basically, if you can correctly identify the meta structure, you're well on your way to all of the sort of large-scale, macro-scale reading issues.

The other thing it should enable you to do is go back through the passage and create a plausible roadmap of each paragraph.

So I don't care, again, about any specific factual claims contained in these paragraphs. I just want to know what the point of the paragraph was.

What was the paragraph doing through the article? Okay. So, in a debate meta structure, suppose we're doing take side, then maybe paragraph one introduces the topic of the debate and names the two sides.

Then paragraph two explains side A and makes one or two of their strongest arguments. Then maybe paragraph three explains side B and makes one or two of their strongest arguments and draws contrast with side A.

then that side A is better than side B for somebody's. That would be a road map of the passage explaining the purpose of each paragraph in the overall argument.

What is it there for? What is the point of it? What is it trying to accomplish? So that's the idea of meta structure.

Now, let's introduce the other meta structure we want to talk about here, which is the question and answer meta structure.

There's a lot less to say about it. It's not very interesting, which is why I'm a surprised they're kind of entire.

I've met a stretches as a whole deserve a ton of attention. This in particular, I don't know, I'll try to get an example out of the second, but.

So question answer. You want to guess what this is, it is exactly what it sounds like it is. What do you think this is?

I mean, a basic way, it's just. The question, the, first of all, all these ministructures are very similar to each other.

Okay, we're almost all of them are, but essentially the author starts by presents some difficult question. Now, if we're in like a science passage, it might be like, what explains some strange phenomenon, basically?

Okay, although if they do that literally, then we might prefer to call that a phenomenon explanation, meta structure, which is almost identical to question, answer, meta structure, but whatever, right?

I mean, I don't, here, I don't know, let me pull up the example passage I have, and we can see what the, what it looks like there, but basically, okay, so for question, answer, okay, so a science question, although I don't really know why this isn't called a phenomenon, but who knows, would be like, what,

is dark matter, okay? And now that's the question that the whole passage is going to be concerned with answering, okay?

Okay, so the point is you introduce question and then you present over the course of the passage one or more answers.

Now, I don't think there's a meaningful difference between this and phenomenon explanation. The only attempt at a difference that's offered in an argument just says, well, if they literally say the question explicitly, then you can call it a question answered meta structure.

I don't know what the point of distinction is. I think it's meaningless, but that's fine. The point is, essentially, there's some something out there that we need to explain, and they're going to introduce that initially, and then they're going to spend the rest of the entire passage trying to explain it, trying to answer the question.

Okay? I should put this a little different. of presenting one more answer, I should say, then sets out to answer, then the rest of the passage, the rest of the passage is an attempt to answer the question.

Now, the only point I want to make here is it's possible that along the way more than one answer will be considered.

If that happens, look out for any hints that the author prefers one answer to the others. There may not be, he may be neutral, he may lean in one direction, or he may fully endorse one side over the others.

Yeah, yeah, the dinosaur extension problem. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with this. Yeah, exactly. Okay, but this is the idea.

Okay, so if you were to guess what, what's the main point of a question answer passage? Yeah, it's the answer.

It's not the question. It's the answer, right? So if there's only one answer, then that's the main point. If there are multiple and the author endorses one.

then that's the main one. The one he endorses. If there are multiple, and he never endorses indicators indicating his tone towards each is the main point.

Okay, that's the idea. Okay, I should get a little wordy there, but, you know, I'm just trying to weigh out all the possibilities, basically, to fix that out here.

Okay. Alright, so that's question answer. There isn't really much more depth to it than this. Like most pieces of really good advice that you can receive, meta structure stuff sounds obvious when you hear it, but you would be shocked at how badly almost everybody does at actually doing this until you make them.

Okay, so even if it seems obvious to you, almost every student I've ever worked with out of, you know, maybe a hundred of them who basically couldn't, couldn't almost ever correctly identify the meta structure or even understand what that was if asked and pressed initially thinks it sounds obvious when they hear it.

That's good, not bad. That's a good thing. That means you can read the way they need you to, but you need to start reading this way.

Okay, you need to start reading this way, truly. Another piece of evidence that this really is good advice, okay, when I took the LSAT for real, I didn't do, I never even cracked open like a tutoring company's book about this.

Okay, so I never read any of the common wisdom. And then when I became a tutor, I had to learn all the,

All the terms that tutoring companies like to use to try to distinguish different question types on the test, and I'll just be completely honest, most of the named question types and logical reasoning are basically nonsense, I think, and don't map onto anything real.

when I took the test, I never thought in those terms at all, explicitly or implicitly. And like, if you had come to me and said like, oh, how would you approach a strength and with necessary assumption requests, I would have said what the what you just said, not nonsense words at me.

But I never had, I never used the word meta structure, but I was 100% reading every passage in this way.

Okay, like, any time I read a passage, I was going, okay, I need to break this down. So what's happened?

We have two sides of debate, got it? Like, what's going to do with this? How are we going to resolve this, right?

100%. That's how I was reading every past. You need to be eating this way. And I'll say one other thing for anyone out there practicing meta structures, this is like super duper duper, not wasted time for your law career.

When you get to law school, if you aren't good at reading this way, you're going to have an even harder time than everyone else's.

Okay, like, when you get the law school, okay, you're going to assign you a million cases to me, then you're going to go to your classes and you're going to get cold calls.

And the cold call is going to be like, okay, Mr. new law student. So in the case of X versus Y that we just read, explain the posture of the case.

And if you don't know how to read from meta structure, you're going to start answering the way most of my students answer when I ask them to summarize the passage we just read, you're going to go like, well, so the court said this, and the court said this, and the court said this, just like a bunch of like, things that the court said in no particular order.

And they're not even gonna let you finish the sentence because it's going to be so off from the way you need to read cases.

And then it'll stop. What's up? What's the posture of the case? Who is suing who? What court are we in front of?

Who won? Who lost? Okay. the point is when you are in law school, you need to always be structuring everything you're reading very intensely in this way.

Hold on. Who's suing who? Over what? What court are we at? Who won? need to answer all those questions before you even begin to mention any of the specific arguments that are being made along the way.

If you haven't done that, then you truly aren't understanding what's going on. The point of the case isn't any of the specific arguments that the court makes.

You could ask why did they bother making those arguments? Oh, to explain why did this guy won? And that guy lost.

Oh, well, who are these guys? One what? What was the dispute? This is why you have to start with structure, okay?

Who's suing who? Where are we? What was the accusation made? What is the main point at issue? What the main dispute and what side did the court take on that dispute?

If you don't answer all those questions first, then you won't understand the point of anything else that gets set.

Okay, I just want to stress that this aspect of the LSAT is arguably one of the like tightest fits for the skills you're going to need in law school like right away out the gate.

So it's really important to try to get this down and it'll have a massive impact on your on your accuracy in logical and reading comp if you if you get used to it.

Okay, that's all. I'm gonna weave us on this note. Does anyone have any last questions before I dip out here?

can say for maybe another two minutes at most. I guess there's only two of you here, but if either one of you had anything I would love to hear it before I abandon the cold winter.

I feel like summer has been going long. I'm going to keep rambling until someone asks a question. But If you don't have one, that's fine, and then I'm going to end the call.

I just want to give you a chance. Okay, five more seconds.

Okay, thanks, Jess. Great to see you. Great to see you too, Ragavender. Good luck, both of you, with everything.

thanks for the discussion earlier. was a really fascinating first 30 minutes really to hear about your backstory.