The psychologist is in.

When I teach an LSAT class, one thing I like to do is to tell the students at the beginning of the course to email me about their goals, what they've been doing to study, and what other obligations they have (that might limit how much time they'll have to study). I tried this for the first time with my last class, and about half the class emailed me a quick note about their goal score.

I told my current class the same thing yesterday, and have so far received a couple responses.

Holy.
Shit.

Both emails are PARAGRAPHS long and jam-packed with personal info. I don't want to get too specific — I'm not trying to ridicule these people at all — but between the two emails, they've told me about neurological injuries incurred on the job, cheating ex-fiances, wives' Native American heritage, and basically their entire life histories. These are people who I've met twice, and my sole job is to teach them how to do well on this standardized test.

So, yes, there's definitely some oversharing going on here and I did get a little judgey about that. On the other hand, it makes me all that much more committed to help these people do as well as they possibly can on this test because I feel empathetic about the problems they've had.

Even wanting to help them on the LSAT, though, is a problematic goal for me. It feels a little like sending lambs to the slaughter - it kills me to know that even if I help this man get into his chosen law school, which considered a low-caliber school, he's going to graduate with heaps of debt and have an incredibly hard time finding a job. I want to tell him that he would have better luck seeking a different job. But, again, my only job is to help him do well on this test - not to judge his ambitions or suggest that he consider another career. So I'm torn between wanting to help in the small way I can, which is getting him to his goal score, and knowing that in the long run I likely won't be helping at all.