Candy Land and LSATs

A month ago my mother challenged a four-year-old boy to a game of Candy Land.  Little Matthew pulled a big upset.  (My mother doesn’t take defeat very well.  While we brothers were growing up, she was ruthless at board games—no wonder we turned out the way we did.  She says she wanted us to be hungry)  My mother proceeded to hound Matthew for a rematch, and he, wanting to remain undefeated, resisted her challenges.  Finally after much “persuasion,” Matthew relented.  It is said that the rematch was an on-the-edge-of-your-seat nail-biter.  After an early-game controversy over who was entitled to go first and a late-game instant replay review, Matthew had won again.  I’m betting my mother’s response was similar to that of Darth Vader at the end of Star Wars, Episode III.

If there is a game entirely devoid of skill, strategy, or brains, it is Candy Land.  It is a game in which two people move a token around the game board by drawing a card each turn.  The card determines where you move.  In fact, once the cards are shuffled and it is decided who gets to go first, it is logically predetermined at the outset what the outcome will be.  Players really aren’t competing to win, they are merely finding out who won before the game started.  Post-game victory celebration would be like gloating over someone because you beat them in a coin toss.  Impressive!

So much is determined by a single card shuffle.

With just under a month to go until the formidable LSAT, I realize that this will have been the hardest test that I will have yet taken.  So many tricks and twists and brain benders.  I expect that I will be ready, but boy progress is frustratingly slow.

Your LSAT score basically figures as half the weight of your application for law school.  The other half of your application is your entire seventeen-year academic development and achievement from kindergarten through the end of college.  23 years of my life, and one day of my life.  A single test.  This will affect which school I get into, whether I get any merit scholarships, maybe who I will marry…

So much is determined by a single number.