Anna: Hello and welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions. Today we're going to be focused on law school admissions. And you might have noticed that I am not Mike. This is Anna Hicks-Jaco, I'm the Chief Operating Officer of Spivey Consulting Group, and you might have heard me mentioned if you are a listener of the podcast by Mike before. I had the opportunity to interview an applicant from Reddit. So she is a current 2022/2023 cycle applicant. She's getting ready to submit her applications, and we're going to follow her throughout her cycle.
So a little bit about her, the applicant we're going to call Lucy, that's not her real name. She has very high numbers. We don't want to get super specific about those numbers because there are very few people who fall within those score bands and the high GPA. But what I will say is that when I applied to law school back in 2014, I applied with a 174 and a 3.93, and Lucy is above both of those numbers. So she's a super high numbers applicant. She's going into this process in a really good place numbers-wise, and we thought that would be an interesting person to follow throughout the cycle because most applicants are not in her boat. Most applicants are a splitter at maybe the majority of their school list. Most applicants are not above the medians for every law school. So we thought it could be interesting and fun to see her perspective as an applicant who is going in with really strong numbers but who still has anxieties about this process. Who still agonizes over her personal statement and how to write her personal statement. Who still is probably not going to get all admits. Lucy, I am crossing my fingers for you that you get nothing but admits, but very few applicants get nothing but admits. So that's very rare. I, for example, did not get admitted everywhere where I applied. I got admitted to most of the places where I applied. I ended up with a full scholarship to my top choice school. So I was over the moon, but I got waitlists, I got denials. And that's the reality of applying to law school, even if you do have super strong numbers. But I think it's going to be interesting to follow Lucy throughout her cycle and see how things go, how she's feeling at various points when she gets her decisions, what her considerations are, how schools are trying to recruit her. So we're going to follow her throughout the cycle.
In the interview, we talk about a ton of stuff. We talk about her timing and her decision to wait a couple of years after college to apply and why she did that, how she made that decision. We're going to talk about her LSAT prep and what that looked like. How she started out and was sort of plateauing well below where she ended up scoring, but how she ended up finding a different prep company, finding a different study method later on and found out that that was actually what worked way better for her, and she had the aptitude to score way higher than her previous plateau. We talk about her process of making her school list. We talk about personal statements and brainstorming and letters of recommendation and resumes and optional essays. I think it's just a great episode. I think Lucy has a lot of wonderful things to say, and I'm looking forward to interviewing her throughout the process. So without further delay, I'm going to turn it over to my interview with Lucy.
I am here with Lucy, whose name is not actually Lucy, but we're keeping her somewhat anonymous, as anonymous as we can anyway, well with her sky-high numbers and all the great stuff she has going on. So Lucy, I suppose my first question is, can you just tell me a little bit about what brought you to this point in your process? What have you done so far? What are your thoughts on where you are so far? And then what's your plan moving forward?
Lucy: Yeah, so I am I guess pretty far along in the application process in terms of being a bit early to everything. I am a couple of years out of college, so I think having that gap gave me a little bit more time to think about my application and maybe get started a little bit earlier. I did think about pre-law throughout college, but kind of like a lot of applicants, I lost my path a little bit in college. Once I got to around my senior year I really wanted a bit of time away to work and try something else out. So I think having that time gave me a little bit of a head start in the application process because I knew maybe a little bit earlier that I was thinking about it and had some time to start preparing to apply this past spring.
So I took the LSAT in March of this year and once I got my score back, I started to think about putting a school list together and started thinking about the optional essays I would need to do and drafting my personal statement. So as of right now, I have pretty much everything ready to go, for the schools that I'm applying to, but I haven't hit submit on most of my applications. I did apply to Arizona State because they only required one letter of recommendation, and that's what I'm still waiting on, but I'm getting ready to apply, hopefully in the next couple of weeks.
Anna: Cool, cool. Okay. So I have a few follow ups on that. First, you talked about how you were interested in law school as an undergrad, then you decided you were going to go work for a little bit, see what else is out there, look at your options before actually applying. That is increasingly common in terms of what we’re seeing. I think before it used to be sort of the predominant path to apply right out of college. But more and more people are seeing both the positive benefits in terms of admissions because law school admissions offices like to see some work experience, all else equal. Certainly no problem if you are “KJD” or someone who went straight from kindergarten to law school. I was a KJD, I had great admissions results. But at the same time, you are seeing more and more people who are taking that route of getting some work experience.
So without getting too much into specifics, can you tell me a little bit about your work experience, have you enjoyed it? Has it seemed like a field that you could potentially stay in for the long term, but you're just more interested in law? Or how has your work impacted your thought process as far as law school and a legal career?
Lucy: Yeah, I will say I'm really glad that I took a couple of years off, not even just for law school admissions purposes though I have heard it is a little bit helpful to just have that kind of narrative. But just personally taking some time away from the academia bubble for me was really helpful and just kind of seeing what the world is like outside of a college or university setting. I really didn't know that it was common at all to take time away until I started really looking at the admissions process my senior year and decided that I wasn't ready to apply then. And it was really like a great relief for me to hear that, because I kind of assumed throughout undergrad that most people went straight through. And so I felt really behind and really panicked when I started realizing that maybe I wasn't ready to go straight through.
So actually I went to college in the middle of the pandemic, and so I was graduating into the pandemic. And the thought of going back to law school when I wasn't 100% sure that I wanted to do it, and I had some pretty significant doubts, and going to do that over Zoom, really freaked me out. So ultimately I decided to pursue a job in a field that I won't be too specific about because I think it's pretty identifying but is not really related to law at all. I mean, there's always intersections with the law in my job, but I'm really grateful that I pursued that because that was always kind of my great ‘what if’. I enjoy it a lot. I can say I work with kids to an extent and that's something that I find really gratifying.
But once I had a few months into my job and like a little bit of time outside of college, I felt like I really had the space to step back and think about what I wanted my life to look like, maybe a little bit further down the line, like 5-10 years in the future. And not having that same level of COVID narrow focus on just like getting through the very immediate future gave me a little bit of time to think about that, and I kept being drawn back to law school and it was always something that I knew I was really interested in and I was really drawn to, but I really felt like I would be selling myself short if I didn't at least like start to try preparing to apply for law school. And as I went further into the process, it furthered my conviction that it was the right thing to do for me.
Anna: Yeah, that makes total sense. That's an interesting point that you said about this was your sort of big ‘what if’. And that you said that you were thinking that you were kind of behind in the process when you weren't ready to apply your senior year. Those are great reasons to go and get some work experience. You're not ready to apply yet. You have something that you think, “Okay, even if I did go to law school, even if I'm super interested in law school and a legal career sounds great to me, is there this other field where I might wonder what would have happened if I'd gone into that?”
The thing is, you can go do that for a year or two years. Law school is still going to be there. Law schools, as we've talked about, will actually look at that favorably. So it's a great idea, especially if you have something like that where you are thinking, “Man, I'm torn between law in this field and this other field is really interesting.” Go do that for a year or go do that for two years and then you can apply. So I think that was a great strategic decision on your part.
Going back to your overview of sort of where you are so far in the application process, you mentioned taking the LSAT. Did you only take the LSAT one time?
Lucy: Yeah, I did take the LSAT one time. I almost took it once before, but I ended up canceling my registration and I'm pretty glad that I did because I think I would have significantly underperformed where I ended up. I first started studying for the LSAT when I was in college having that first crisis mode about whether I should go to law school around my junior year. So I started studying I think then around January or February of my junior year, just because I remembered like, “Oh crap. Like if I'm going to apply for law school in the fall, I really need to get on this.” And I made some progress and I was slowly creeping up with my score. I think at the time I was really aiming for like a 168 or a 169 because I remember looking at UVA’s medians at the time.
Anna: Oh, how things have changed.
Lucy: Yeah, I know. I mean, I'm really glad now that that wasn't my goal because I would have been applying in the 2020 cycle and I would have probably had a really rude awakening that things had changed.
Anna: Yeah, that was a tough cycle because most of the time, most years you can look at prior-year medians and you can get a pretty good idea of where you should be aiming for certain schools. That year in particular, you just would have been way off. “I want to go to UVA, so I'm going to get a 169.” Oops, sorry, that is not what UVA was aiming for in that cycle at all. So in retrospect, also glad that that's not how things turned out for you. For those that it did happen for, that was extremely rough. And please note that we all recognize that that was a difficult cycle and that if you ended up at a law school where you were happy after that cycle, then you did an amazing job.
So you took the LSAT one time later. I imagine you didn't study continuously from your junior year of college up through when you actually took the test or did you? Tell me a little bit more about your studying.
Lucy: Yeah, I did take a pretty significant break. I guess I started my study process January or February of my junior year, and I studied for probably like a few months. I was working, I guess, pretty hard at it. I mean, not as hard as I ended up trying, but I was really kind of using materials that didn't work for me. And so I like how that really quick initial improvement from my diagnostic, I think I had like a 156-157 diagnostic score. And so I like really quickly shot up to the low-mid 160s but I really got stuck there because I wasn't attacking the material in the right way. I wasn't really learning. I was just kind of like drilling continuously.
And so when the pandemic happened and the move home from college, I really just like lost momentum. That I had registered, I think, for that August LSAT. But like a month out of it, I was like, “There's no way I'm going to be where I want to be.” And I ended up just moving it throughout the year. I remember they had a thing where you could just call them and you could move it for free. And so I did that that like the entire year until maybe the next March or something and I just missed the date by one day and I was like, ‘All right, I have to cancel it. I'm not taking the LSAT.” I kind of then was like, maybe I won't go to law school. And by then that was kind of where my thought process was. But I ended up really focusing on getting a job out of college and getting settled with that once I graduated.
And then around, I would say November of this past year, I started looking back at the LSAT and thinking about it again, and I decided to give it kind of one more fair shake. And I started using materials that actually made sense for me. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I was using 7Sage and I found them really helpful personally and ended up doing way better than I ever thought was possible. I remember when I was first studying, I was like, “There's no way I could break a 170. It's just simply not possible for me.”
Anna: How wrong were you?
Lucy: I know, I was very wrong. And I'm really glad I had people in my life that were like, “I think you are smart enough to do this. I think you can do better than you think you can.” Because if I maybe didn't have friends who had applied to law school before, I probably would have just settled with a lower score than was maybe possible for me. So my goal score just kind of kept creeping up until I registered for the test. And around when I registered, I was averaging mid 170s and then I took the test and I did a little bit better than I ever had before, which was really nice. It was a very welcome surprise.
Anna: You know, for everybody who goes in and just has a bad day on their LSAT test day, which is so common. You've been knocking out of the park your practice tests, no problem. And then test day you just wake up and your brain is all scrambled and you're just all messed up. For all of those people who have bad days on their LSAT test day, there are the occasional folks who just have a great day. Maybe it's the adrenaline of the test that gives you some positive energy, I don't know what it is. Do you have a sense for what sort of gave you that game-day boost?
Lucy: Yeah, I don't know. I tried really hard in the month before my test to really replicate testing conditions. I was taking it not at my house because I knew that my house would be way too stressful for me. So I actually went to the space I was testing in the week before. I got up at like 7 AM to take a prep test at 8 AM. That test was like really stressful for me and I got out a lot of the jitters I think I had about the actual test day that when I got to the real LSAT, it really felt like I'd already done it before. And I'm sure I got lucky in a lot of ways. The test just happened to meet my strengths and I got the version of the test that I would do better on or something like that. But I think having that experience where I tried to really make it seem like I had taken the LSAT before, even if I hadn’t, was helpful for me.
And then also just kind of like a lot of affirmations and confidence things. I literally would write in a notebook, “I've done everything I can to prepare for this test. I'm ready to take this test. It's out of my control now.” Feeling like I did what I could, I was going to perform well, even if I didn't know that was the case. Really put me in the right confident mindset.
Anna: I hope that if any of our listeners are currently preparing for the LSAT, I hope they listen really hard to what you were just talking about because I think all of that is incredibly important. I was an LSAT tutor for a couple of years. That was a while ago, but that was back when you had to go to a university or you had to go somewhere else to take the LSAT. You chose to go somewhere else, which sounds like it was a smart move for you, but that was back when we were all packed into a big classroom at some university, and I did exactly what you did. I was like, I'm going to go to that university on Saturday mornings. I did it I think the four Saturdays before my test. I would go to that university, I'd go sit in a classroom. I felt very awkward because I didn't belong there. The university was not my university, but it was a public campus. I wasn't doing anything wrong. I wasn't sneaking in. I'd wake up early, eat the same breakfast I was going to eat and go over there and take my LSAT practice test in that actual room and tell myself, tell my brain, you know, “This is the real test, pretend this is the real test,” trying to get myself into that sort of game day mindset. And then exactly like you said, once you actually get there for the day of the test, it feels a lot less stressful and big and overwhelming because you can just tell yourself, “I've done this before. I've done this exact same thing before. I'm just going to sit down and take another practice test like I have taken many times before.”
Another point that you made in there that I think was important was that the first time you studied for the LSAT, you felt like the material just didn't quite click with your brain. It just didn't quite work in the optimal way for you. And then you switched to another set of test prep materials and you found that that really did click with you and click with your brain. I think that that's also an incredibly important point. I will say Spivey Consulting Group, we have been approached by numerous, numerous LSAT prep companies in terms of, “Can we do some sort of referral agreement? Can you recommend us to your clients?” That sort of thing. And we have said no to all of those, even the companies that we think extremely highly of that we know get people great results. And that's because in our view, it is very individual.
A test prep company, a test prep book that works incredibly well for one person, might not work incredibly well for you, that might get you to around the middle of your potential, whereas it would get somebody else to the top of your potential. So definitely, definitely. I think there's a great lesson to be learned in what you did, which was you tried something new just because something wasn't working, just because you'd use this test prep book or did you self-study? It sounded like you self-studied. Did you take any tests or use a tutor?
Lucy: I did a test prep course my junior year when I was first studying, and that didn't work very well for me. And it was the more expensive option too. So I was like a little bummed out in hindsight that I like wasted my money on that, but it was a learning experience and I wish I had done a little bit more research on what people recommend because I think in hindsight, if I'd gone on like the LSAT Reddit or something like that, and I said I was thinking about this course in particular, people might have steered me away from it. But it was pre-pandemic, it was the only in-person option near my college and I was just kind of like, that's what people do. So I just signed up for it without really thinking about it. But the second time I studied, I just pretty much self-studied or 7Sage, and that ended up working really well for me.
Anna: I really think that you have to find what works for you. Clearly, what you were doing the first time around didn't work for you as well as another way of doing it. And I think a lot of people and you know, maybe you in a different world, in a different circumstance, maybe you also would have settled for that just thinking, “Okay, here I've hit my LSAT plateau like I don't seem to be going up anymore, so I'm going to go take that test.” But I would definitely encourage people to try out different companies, try out different study methods. As you said, maybe a class is really where you thrive. Maybe a group class is where you're going to be able to learn the best, or maybe self-studying is or maybe you need a one-on-one tutor. It's different for everybody.
In terms of test prep companies, I don't want to speak to specific companies, but from my view I think that it is so individual but I would tend to avoid companies that are huge companies that started with tests that are not the LSAT. So if it's a company that was originally an SAT prep company and then many years later it started to do LSAT, that's probably where I would recommend caution for our listeners. Will be a little vague though with it.
Lucy: Yeah, definitely. I agree and I think it is true. Like there's so many different methods of studying that work differently for people. But I think a good way I would strategize to go through the list is just look at what people tend to recommend and there's a good chance that you overlap with the majority of people. I think there's plenty of really great LSAT resources out there. They tend to be the ones that are spoken the most highly of.
Anna: Yeah, I would tend to agree with that. So do your research. If you're listening to this podcast in 10 years for some reason and there are all different companies, go do your research, see what everybody says now. It'll change over time, I'm sure.
Okay, so you took the LSAT, you took it that one time after having deferred and put it off many, many times and then withdrawing from that test years ago, you got that score back. Is that when you sort of decided, “Okay, law school is for me, I'm going to do it because I nailed this test and I know I can get into great schools,” or what was your thought process when you got that score back?
Lucy: Yeah, I mean I was definitely very thrilled when I got it back. About a month or two before that, I'd really settled on law school. I think I wouldn't have applied if I had really gotten a score that I wasn't proud of, that it wouldn't open the kinds of doors for me that I was looking for. But I was pretty sure I was going to keep trying until I got that kind of score. And so by then I kind of knew that it was for me and I was going to apply. I think getting that score definitely made me reconsider the kinds of schools that I was going to apply to. It definitely made me confident that I should try and shoot my shot at some more competitive institutions as well and really widen my school list.
Anna: Yeah, that makes total sense. So was that sort of the first item on your to-do list once you had gotten your LSAT score back and you were getting ready, “Okay, I'm actually going to start putting together my application materials and start this process.” Was that sort of looking at schools deciding which schools you're applying to the first step?
Lucy: Yeah, I think that was kind of what I thought of at first. I was a little bit paralyzed by the amount of different things that you have to do when you're putting together your application. I mean, I remember looking at the list of all the materials and stuff and being like, “Where do I start now?” Because it was almost kind of a let-down to be done with the LSAT. It's like, “Oh, now I have to do everything else.” Different from a test that's a very objective measure, these are all like very subjective things with different preferences and things like that. So I probably first started off with my school list. I knew kind of from like perusing the Reddit and talking to some of my friends who have applied in previous cycles or are in law school now that I kind of wanted to focus primarily on the T14. So I kind of looked through all of those schools and there were a few that I kind of knocked off my list just because I wouldn't go there over like a peer institution that I probably had a good shot at. But for the most part, I decided to apply to most of them just to see.
Anna: Yeah, that makes total sense. So you figured out your school list, you started with that sort of T14 type of range, you looked more closely at the individual schools. You decided, “Okay, some of these maybe aren't for me.” How many schools are you applying to outside of that sort of traditional top range?
Lucy: Just a few. I applied to ASU, I actually did get in a few weeks ago, which was really expedient. Yeah. I did not expect them to be so fast, but they were super-fast. It was really incredible. Within a couple of weeks, I mean, all the other admissions officers, they have like an unreasonable standard to meet because ASU was so nice and so fast and really sweet. And they sent me, like, a little video. I don't have enough nice things to say about them. Like, they were just so wonderful. I kind of applied to them because they sent out that CAS waiver as well. So it was like completely free. But then I started to look into them more and you know, it's a beautiful area of the country and they have certain law programs that really meet the kind of like specific interests I had. So I was like, well, I might as well just apply and see.
And it was nice to be able to go through the application process and like previewing the application and submitting the PDF and all the big things is like a bit of a trial run just to see that I'm doing it correctly. Even though I was like, there is probably a lower chance I would end up there, but they're such a wonderful school. I was like, they're a great safety for me to have.
Anna: It sounds like ASU was just like the perfect, “safety school.” I'm saying quote unquote, because there are a number of people on our team at Spivey Consulting who hate the terminology “safety school.” I actually think we have a podcast entirely about that, but we're using it as shorthand so that we both understand what we're talking about. Schools where you have a really, really good shot based on your numbers and where you would very much expect to get in.
But I think it's a great, great, “safety” for you because it sounds like you're actually interested in the school. If you got in nowhere else, which I would be so incredibly shocked if you got it nowhere else, I would think it would mean that you just only sent in one more application or something like that. But if you were to get in nowhere else and you only got into ASU, it sounds like you would genuinely be interested in ASU. Like that's a law school where you could see yourself, and that's really the ideal type of school to have sort of as the part of your list where you know you're going to be able to get in.
Because we so often talk to applicants who want safety schools who are putting together safety schools, but they include schools on their list that they would not ever want to go to. And I think that if you're applying to schools that are peers to where you really want to attend, you know, maybe there's something to be said about scholarship reconsideration and that sort of thing, having competing offers. But when you're looking at schools that are below the range where you are really, really aiming, it doesn't make sense to be applying to a bunch of schools where you have no interest, you would never attend there. You aren't interested in the geographic area or the academic programs or anything like that. So it sounds like ASU was a perfect choice for you, and it sounds like you've had a really positive experience with them so far.
Lucy: Yeah, I definitely highly recommend looking into them. They seem like a really wonderful school. And then I also added WashU to my list. They're also like one of those schools that people tend to include because of how proactive their admissions office is in recruiting and things like that. They were really on my radar early on. I just heard a lot of nice things about them and about their generosity with scholarships and things like that, that I felt like they would be a good fit as well.
Anna: Definitely. So you created your school list, I know you mentioned that you applied to ASU because they only required one letter of recommendation and you were waiting for your second. Can you tell me a little bit about your letters of recommendation? Because that often is the case, they will tell you, people might be ready with all of the rest of their application materials. And all they're waiting on is that like one 75-year-old professor who's like got a million things on their plate. So tell me a little bit about your letters of recommendation. Who did you ask? Did you ask two professors, did you ask someone from your professional world? How did you decide? Tell me a little bit about your thought process there.
Lucy: I asked two professors. I definitely considered asking someone from my work experience, but I haven't told my job yet that I'm applying for law school because it felt a little premature to do that. And I don't want them to think I’ve got one foot out the door, so I decided professors would probably be the best route. I have two letters of recommendation and both of them are professors that I worked pretty closely with.
One of them I think I took maybe three or four of his classes and he was my thesis advisor. And then I had another one who I worked really closely with her on a research project. So they were both professors that I felt like would speak really highly to my academic experience. And in particular, I also just knew they were both genuinely very nice people and would be willing to do me a favor. But I know it's hard to get letters of recommendation. I feel for people, especially people at larger institutions, where it's a little bit harder to have that relationship with a professor. I got really lucky that I went to a very small school, so I had really tiny classes and it was really easy for me to get that. But it's kind of a bummer that that's not always the case and sometimes schools are a little bit rigid about that.
Anna: Yeah, I think it's particularly tricky with folks who went through part of their undergrad during the pandemic, also during periods of time when they were remote. Because it's much more difficult to make relationships, I would imagine, over Zoom classes as opposed to being in a classroom and you can stay after and talk to them and you can go to office hours, etc., etc. Did you interact with either of your professors who you ended up asking for letters of recommendation primarily remotely or were both of those from sort of pre-pandemic where you had been in-person?
Lucy: We did it pretty much completely virtually, I think it would be a good idea. I remember reading like the recommendations when I was first thinking about law school to ask them early, and I kind of wish I did that just because it can be a little bit awkward to go back to someone and be like, “Hey, I don’t know you remember me and it's been a little while, but I was wanting for you to do me a favor,” and I just chose to do that instead of like setting up a meeting with them and like having kind of a catch up that leads to just me asking them, just to cut to the chase, which I know people do it either way and it's probably fine either way. One of them, it was a professor, she just texted me randomly about something related to some research we did and it was my little in.
Anna: Perfect opportunity.
Lucy: “I was thinking about you and I have a question.” And then the other professor I just called, emailed and he was really nice about it. That was one thing I really procrastinated. I was super nervous about asking them, but they’re professors, they probably had been asked for like 20 different letters of recommendation in their career. They know the drill. They'll do it if you've been nice to them generally. And if someone isn't super enthusiastic about it, it seems like a good idea just to move on and find someone else.
Anna: Yeah, that's a pretty good indicator that they might write a letter of recommendation that could potentially harm your application. Probably not in some huge way unless they say, “This person was terrible and I hate them.” But it can be a negative certainly on your application if you have a recommendation from someone who just says, you know, “Looks like this person got an A in my class, I don't remember much about them, but they asked me and I figured I would try to support my students.” That kind of thing can be a negative. It's one of many feathers on the scale, maybe it's even heavier than a feather, but it certainly can make a difference. And all of the application materials can make a difference, of course, in their own small way. So did you consider asking anybody else or you had those two professors, you asked them, you knew for sure they were your options and they said yes?
Lucy: Yeah. I think for me they were the biggest ones that like jumped out in my mind. There were a few others that I considered, but for me it kind of felt like they both knew me from kind of different times in my college career, so it felt like it made sense to get both of their perspectives. I kind of considered doing a third letter, but I just didn't come up with anyone who I felt like was going to add something really crazily different. So I just settled on the two.
Anna: On the professional side, going back to what you mentioned when I first asked about your letters of recommendation, law schools definitely understand that if you are one two years into a job, law schools get that sometimes it doesn't make sense in a sort of political way for you to be asking for a letter of recommendation from an employer who might be a relatively new employer if you just started, or in your case, if it’s just someone who you aren't ready to tell them that you are leaving yet. So law schools understand that.
If you have been out of school for a number of years, you've gone through a couple of jobs, most law schools will want to see a professional letter of recommendation. It can be very helpful. But in this type of situation, certainly it's a very, very common circumstance and something that law schools understand. So you asked for your letters of recommendation, you've made your school list. I imagine what you started thinking about next were the various written materials of your applications or personal statement, resume, any other types of essays. Do you have any addenda? Are you writing a- I imagine you would not be writing a GPA or LSAT addendum, given your very strong numbers, that would be ill-advised to say that you underperformed on your LSAT or something of that nature. Do you have any other addenda that you are planning to submit to law schools?
Lucy: No, I don't. So it’s really just the big ones.
Anna: Okay, so personal statement, resume are probably your two biggest ones. I know that you are actually working with one of our consultants on your personal statement. And that's interesting because we actually got asked when we posted about this on Reddit to interview somebody who has been working with a Spivey consultant. And I thought that you were a really interesting pick because you're not the type of client who we usually work with. Usually, if you come to us with super sky-high numbers, especially if you're not saying Stanford is my number one choice or Yale is my number one choice school where, regardless of your numbers, you need a really strong app to get in. I don't mean to exclude any other schools intentionally, those are just two schools that came to mind.
Usually we will not work with people when they have super high numbers because we are not going to be able to add that much value and that varies based on your goals. So super high numbers might be numbers well below yours, but relative to their goals. So if you are in a great place to be admitted to your schools, then usually we're going to say, “I don't know if you need our help.”
So my guess, and you can tell me which, if either, of these is right. My guess is that either you came to us in the first place with the idea of, “I just want help on my personal statement. I just want to make sure that I put my best foot forward with this one essay and I don't need help for the rest of things.” Or this is my other potential guess, you maybe came in not knowing quite what you wanted or thinking that potentially you wanted more comprehensive help. But maybe after speaking with your consultant, they perhaps advised that you might not need that comprehensive help. Now tell me what actually happened, because I don't know. I haven't spoken to your consultant about it.
Lucy: It was kind of a mix of those things. I was definitely the most nervous about my personal statement, and that was especially like in the spring, something I was really working myself up over because it's, at least in my mind, like such an enigmatic part of the application and there's not a lot of consistent advice on it. There's not a lot of sample personal statements out there. So like the more research I did, the more confused I felt. I knew I had a pretty good application from the other parts of my app and I was like, I don't really want to bumble this by like accidently committing some, like, terrible faux pas or like really annoying an admissions officer by like just doing something as an honest mistake, maybe told a kind of story they don't like or something like that.
And I was pretty nervous about looking into consulting because I'm sure, you know, there's a lot of like discourse on like Reddit and other admissions communities about consulting. Who it's right for, sometimes like whether it's fair at all. And so I felt pretty nervous looking into it because I was a little worried that it would kind of be something that if admissions officers found out, it would be like a huge detriment to me or something, which I now don't think to be the case. So I kind of had in my mind the personal statement was what I wanted to work on. And I scheduled an initial conversation with my consultant, and he was really nice about it. He also kind of confirmed that probably a more comprehensive consulting package wouldn't be right for me, but it would be worth it if I wanted to just work on the personal statement. Because especially since I'm not doing addenda and things like that, it's like such a big percentage of what ad comms would see of my application.
Anna: Yeah, that makes total sense. And what you're talking about with conflicting and vague and difficult to actually apply advice online about personal statements being so true to me. And I think part of that is just the nature of the personal statement. I mean, not to be cliche, but the word “personal” is in there, you know, it is very, very individual. So you can see 20 examples and 10 of them you hate, but they worked perfectly for that person and, you know for a fact that they got great results. But you hate them, and why do you hate them? And are you supposed to like them? Are you supposed to write something just like that, even though you hate them? It doesn't make any sense. And it's very difficult to apply the advice being given on a broad level to your individual totally unique life. Because all of us have completely different paths. We all have our own individual experiences and goals and failures and motivations and successes.
So it's difficult to read general advice and then take a look at your actual life and your actual experiences and actually distill from that advice. “Okay, what of my experiences is going to make the best personal statement?” “What, based on my values and based on my voice and based on my goals, is going to make the most sense.” So that does make sense to me why you might have been looking for some further guidance on that.
So tell me a little bit about your process with working with our consultant on your personal statement. How did you start out? Tell us about the brainstorming process. Where are you in it now? Are you pretty much at a complete draft and how did you get there?
Lucy: Yeah, I mean, it was a very, very long process, like longer than I thought. And I'm sure if I had done it on my own, I think I would have come out with something good. I think I'm generally like a good writer. Like I think I would have some good stories to tell, but I really think I ended up with a product that I was really proud of. And throughout the process I was a little worried, not from Spivey specifically, but I didn't want to sign up for an essay writing service or something like that. But I really came out of it feeling like it was completely like 100% my voice and my words and that was something that I was really happy with and really proud of.
It started off probably at the end of the spring of this year, and I didn't have like a complete draft until like just a few weeks ago. So it was really a several month-long process. And I think if I had still been feeling like I needed a little bit extra tweaking or I wanted to change my topic or something midway through, I could have probably gone even longer, but I really felt like I got everything I wanted to out of it and I had a really positive experience.
I think starting off we just primarily did some brainstorming. I think before I even like started a draft personal statement, I wrote maybe like 15 pages of just like bullet points based on just some like primary questions. And a lot of that didn't end up in my final personal statement but just like having that opportunity for introspection and thinking about my life and what kind of then like the influences that have guided it, was really helpful for me, and just thinking about those repeated themes that kept coming up in the process. And so after like a few meetings, I kind of narrowed it down to like a few big stories and then from that was kind of like what blossomed into my personal statement topic.
Anna: Cool. I love brainstorming exercises like that that are super broad because yeah, a lot of it is not going to end up in your personal statement, but you might also find some great gems that could make potential optional statement or supplementary essay topics. So I think that that can be a super useful exercise, especially if you're doing this at the beginning of your process. And I think most people work on their personal statements before they start working on optional essays and school specific documents and things like that. So I think that can be really helpful.
So my advice to my listeners is if you do some sort of brainstorming exercise, if you write down a list of ideas, don't throw that list of ideas away or don't put it in the trash on your computer if you're writing it on a laptop, because that could make potentially great topics for other essays. That could potentially be a wonderful optional statement later on in the process and you might not remember from your personal statement brainstorming that, “Oh, I had this great idea. I thought this was a really interesting story and even though it didn't fit into what I wanted my personal statement to be, maybe it fits into this other type of question.”
I also want to return to something you said that I think was really important, which is that you felt like your personal statement was your words and your voice. And that is something that is extremely important to us. We could put out identical essays that we think are great and lovely in our consultants’ voices if we wanted to, but that would frankly be a disservice to our clients. Not just because it would be dishonest and unethical, but because what makes the strongest personal statements is the sincerity, is the genuineness. And you're not going to get that if somebody else is writing your essay for you, of course you're not going to get that. So I think that's so important, and I'm glad you had a positive experience. So it's pretty much ready to go?
Lucy: Yeah, it is ready to go. I did my final check over it and got the final thumbs up, and you know, I'm really glad I went through the process. You know, I don't want to like, advise anyone to do consulting because I know it's a big upfront cost and like that can be prohibitive for a lot of people. But for me, like, I think it was an investment that was really worth it. And, you know, I'm ultimately really happy that I made that choice. And I think honestly, it was really reasonable for the amount of like hours of time I got with a professional. It's just like getting LSAT tutoring or something in my opinion, and I'm really happy with the end result. Even just like as an operational process, that opportunity to have that amount of brainstorming and thinking about my own life I think as a person that was really helpful as well.
Anna: Yeah, I'm so glad that you had a great experience. Similar to you, I don't want people to feel like they have to use consulting to have a stellar application. That's demonstrably false, right? Like we have talked to people on this podcast who never worked with us, never worked with one of our consultants. They show us their applications, they are stellar, beautiful applications with gorgeous personal statements and we're like, “Oh yeah, it makes total sense that you got in everywhere you applied, it makes total sense that you ended up with this huge scholarship at this great school. It's just going to take a little bit more legwork, certainly. So I would definitely advise anybody to spend a lot of time on that brainstorming process, spend time figuring out, okay, what is sincere and what is genuine for me while keeping it professional. So you are applying to a professional program, you want it to be something that you are comfortable submitting to a group of professionals. But ultimately it is also something that is personal to you and your life and your experiences. And your sincerest essay is going to be your best essay. Those are my thoughts on personal statements.
While we're talking about vague personal statement advice, I know it is difficult to apply, but you know yourself better than anybody, and maybe somebody can help you figure that out a little bit more. But ultimately, even if you work with somebody, the ideas come from you, the writing comes from you. It all ultimately originates with the applicant. And if it doesn't, if there's some other company out there writing essays for you, that is a bad idea. I do not recommend that you submit that because it's not going to be a great personal statement if it's not genuine to you.
So let's talk a little bit about your other application materials; you have applied to one school. You have your personal statement ready, presumably you have your resume ready. I don't want to talk too much about your resume because it's all very highly specific stuff to you. Lucy, do you have any particular thoughts on the resume that you'd like to share, any sort of speed bumps that you encountered, any problems that you had during the resume process?
Lucy: No, I mean, I appreciated that the resume was pretty straightforward. I mean, I honestly just like used a template from my university, and it worked fantastic for me. Similarly with the personal statement, I kind of had to pull myself back a little and stop overthinking like the different advice from different sources about what admissions officers want in the resume. The real one page versus two-page debate that continues to plague Reddit forever and just like settle on like what I felt was like a clean, professional document. And like, I highlighted what I wanted to highlight about my work experience.
Anna: Okay. If you feel comfortable answering, is your resume one page or two pages?
Lucy: One and three quarters of a page. It's pretty much two pages. I did make another one-page one for like one school in particular that seems to really like one-page resumes. I'm sure most people can guess what that school is.
Anna: Yeah, I think there are a couple of schools if we're looking at sort of the broader list of all ABA accredited law schools, not just your school list. There are a couple of schools, maybe a few schools that either express a preference for a one-page resume or even give it as a requirement of a one-page resume. Those are the exceptions and not the rule, though. So certainly if you have the content to fill one and three quarters of a page, fill those one and three quarters of a page for most schools. You're going to have to adapt it to a one-page version for a few schools, probably. But here's what I will say, we have over 250 years of collective experience on our team of folks who are working in admissions offices, making decisions on files. And not one single one of them thinks that everybody needs a one-page resumé when they are applying to law school.
So not everybody should have a two-page resume. If you are a KJD and you did one club in college and you don't have any work experience, then don't make things up to try to get you over one page. Don't stretch things out if that doesn't make sense. But if you have the content to fill it, law schools want to know about your full experiences, law schools want to know that stuff. So don't give yourself 15 bullet points for like your part time job at a bookstore or whatever, but if it's valuable stuff then include it. And I'm glad you made that choice.
So now imagine you're looking, this is what I'm guessing, you're looking at specific schools’ applications and sort of optional essays and various optional things that they ask you for. Is that where you are in the process?
Lucy: Yeah, I'm pretty much done with all of them. I'm just kind of doing the final polishing. It's just nice to be in that stage, but they definitely like the why essays and the optional essays, I felt like for me at least, they came a lot quicker than the personal statement. I really budgeted maybe more time for them than I needed, but I found them to be a bit more straightforward. And especially now that I have those other pieces of my application, it kind of came naturally now that I was in that mindset of thinking about writing essays.
Anna: Yeah, that makes sense. Did you encounter any optional essays that you found interesting or fun or frustrating or difficult? The why X essays I feel like are all pretty similar in terms of what you're looking for. But there are schools that give you more fun prompts, more interesting prompts, prompts that you don't see on any other schools’ applications. Did you have any particular thoughts about any of those?
Lucy: Yeah, I do think the Stanford ones are very fun. And I think the one that had me scratching my head the most was the Penn core values one. It was hard to kind of articulate that, what I thought about that. Especially distilling your essence as a person and your core values, was a difficult thing and then like tying them to an institution's core values which are like very different. I think ultimately it ended up fine, but I remember being really frustrated one night doing it, and then like taking a step back and searching on Reddit. And I saw someone just say like, “it's literally just a one-page essay with a prompt. It's not that hard.” And so I applied that energy to the essay, and once I kind of stopped freaking out about it, it turned out okay I think.
Anna: I feel like you could take that sentence and apply it to so many things in life. Like 80% of my life, probably. And once you start freaking out about things, it actually turns out it's not as stressful as you were making it. I think that's good advice. That particular prompt for me and maybe Mike Spivey will tell me to cut this out afterward because it's school specific, but that prompt in particular for me I quite like, because I find it to be a great starting point for why X essays for people who are writing really boilerplate non-differentiating white X essays. Because I think the strongest why X essays are those that, and you probably know all this I'm speaking generally, but are the ones that don't just list, “You have this program, and you have this great clinic and you have this great faculty member and I'm really interested in all of that. And that's why your school is my top choice.” An essay like that is not going to be nearly as differentiated as an essay that actually ties it into who you are and focuses on who you are and what you value and your goals and your experiences.
Just saying, “Oh, I'm really interested in this clinic,” is one thing versus if you say, “I’ve worked for over three years in this field and that's really shown me how important it is to do X, Y, Z, and that's a huge value of mine. And so your school’s clinic and your emphasis on this clinic is really in line with my values.” So I like the Penn essay because it sort of gets you thinking in that way of actually connecting, not just listing things about the school, but tying it into aspects of yourself and your values and parts about you. But I like the other ones you mentioned too.
I think Stanford's prompts change at least every few years. They might change every year. Not all of them, but they will swap some in and out and they're always fun. Georgetown’s have always been fun. Although I'm sad, back when I applied they had, tell me if they put this back, I don't think they did. But back when I applied, they had one of their options was an empty box. They just sort of gave you a box and they were like, “You can fill this box however you want to.” So we would draw pictures and people would put a little poem or just put something creative and fun in there. So maybe they got tired of that. Maybe they got tired of seeing people's pictures and being like, “This adds nothing.” I don't know. But they don't have that anymore, right?
Lucy: I don't think so. I do know for undergrad, I think Rice University does that. I remember someone like telling a story, like someone just put like a bag of rice in a box and mailed it.
Anna: That's so strange.
Lucy: But I'm sure it was very sufficiently quirky and cute. They know they had that, like, reputation.
Anna: I can recall one good friend of mine who was applying to Georgetown who actually ended up matriculating to Georgetown with a good scholarship. Graduated from Georgetown and is now in an awesome DOJ-type position. She did the box and she was a former graphic designer, I’m giving you so much information about this person who applied years ago. She was a graphic designer, she designed a little like Georgetown thing that sort of tied in like a logo of her and like a logo of Georgetown and like a picture of Georgetown's campus, their building. And I thought it turned out really cool. I thought it turned out really neat. I wasn't sure what information it really gave Georgetown about her, apart from just like she put in this effort to do something fun and creative and interesting so maybe she's more interested in Georgetown. But it worked. She ended up at Georgetown.
So I really like those. It really gives people a chance to express a different side of themselves that you don't necessarily see in other parts of the application. I also think it gives you a great ability to sort of balance like separate parts of your application. So if your personal statement is about something that was really dark and serious that happened to you and that was your best topic, which for a lot of people it might be, you can lighten it up with these other optional essays. Or if your personal statement has some humor and is a little bit lighter, maybe you can write about something a little bit more serious or intellectual or academic in those optional essays. I love seeing how people fill out those questions. So glad to see that you had fun with it and you enjoyed it.
So you're ready to submit at this point basically, what is stopping you from hitting that submit button? You're doing last reviews of everything or where are you right now?
Lucy: Pretty much just my letter of recommendation. I did put all my information in the forms and everything, which is a whole other thing. I did not expect that to take so much time. Hopefully in the next week or so I will have that and I'll hit submit. I was kind of like rearing to submit like a couple of weeks ago, but now that I realized how much waiting is ahead of me, it's like, well, maybe it's nice to have this little break in between. I really don't have to worry about that much, although it’s just like getting this letter in.
Anna: There is a lot of waiting ahead of you, certainly. I remember that realization dawning on me. Before, they wouldn't tell you the specific date that scores were coming out. They were just coming out at some point within a couple week range. So everybody would just be checking constantly. The obsessive hyper-online applicants, right. Like, I'm not talking about the well-adjusted people who are out hiking and living their lives. I'm talking about applicants like me who are obsessed about this process. I was just constantly refreshing to try to see. And then the morning that scores were going to come out, but before scores actually had come out, the green icon where it showed your score would turn gray. And that was like the secret indicator. LSAC didn't like tell you this. It was very obvious but like, they didn't say, like, “Watch out for the gray icon.”
The morning that it turned gray, that was the day scores were going to be released. So everyone would run online and freak out, “Gray day, it's gray day, it's gray day!” I'm very glad they don't do it that way anymore, is what I will say. It was very stressful. So you're waiting for your LSAT score and then you submit your applications and you're waiting for your applications and then you get your decisions. You go to law school, you wait for your exam grades because of course, you know, in law school you're not taking quizzes and handing in papers the whole semester and your final exam is just one small part of your grade. For most classes, especially during 1L, that’s your whole grade. You're just sitting there waiting for your law school professors to work over their winter break and get their grading done so you can see if you did badly or well or whatever. Then you wait for bar results and… so much waiting, so much waiting.
Lucy: I’ve got to get used to it at this point. It's not going to stop.
Anna: I can sense from your mood, from your tone, that you are not worried about this. But just for our listeners, there is no strategic difference between submitting two weeks ago, three weeks ago, when you had all your application materials ready and next week when your letter of recommendation comes in. So applying beginning of September, applying middle of October, applying even early in November, you might have been admitted already to a school or to perhaps for those like super early movers like ASU, you heard super early because you are a super strong applicant.
If you had applied to ASU in January, they also would have admitted you quickly. Oftentimes the people who are being admitted right now are the people who have super strong numbers, who have super strong backgrounds, or who applied early decision that’s sort of a different group. But if you're not applying early decision, the people who are applying now and getting in now, getting in super early, probably would have been admitted also if they had applied next month or the month after because these are typically the strongest applicants. That's just my two cents, you don't seem too worried about it. Would you agree?
Lucy: Yeah, well, kind of internally, there's like a battle going on. That part of me that's like, “Submit now, right now, like do you even need your letter?” And the more rational part of me that is trying to be patient and wait. But you know, I mean, it is hard with Reddit and Law School Data and all these things. Like seeing like all the people who’ve already sent their applications and like people are starting to like get ahead of you and get in. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, am I behind?” Even though it's probably this really small percentage of people who just really had their stuff together early, there’s still that impulse of, “If I applied three weeks ago, like would I have heard?” Maybe. But it probably won't make that much of a difference in the end.
Anna: Right. The answer is maybe, especially since you are a really strong applicant and as I talked about, usually it's the strongest applicants who get the results fastest if you're not applying early decision. But ultimately it's not a race, you know, and if you get into UVA, I know UVA is a school that you're interested in. If you get into UVA this month or if you get into UVA in January and you go to UVA, you're in the exact same spot regardless of when you got admitted.
Obviously, there are some caveats and issues as far as scholarships and that sort of thing. But when we're looking in this timeframe and we're looking at, “I wanted to submit in early September, but now I'm going to have to submit in early to mid-October.” That's not where you're starting to get into scholarship issues yet. I think you're still in a great place right now. Definitely. You know, send another reminder to that recommender if you need to, because that is often what holds people up. But I think you're in a great spot right now.
And that is sort of the issue, too, with comparing yourself with people online, because that's a self-selected group, right? If you are the world's chillest person about law school admissions and you're just doing it at home and not really engaging online, and those aren't the people who you see posting online. Those aren’t the people whose application updates you see. Even if they might be doing really well, they're just not so hyper-fixated on this process and comparing with others. So you have to keep that in mind as well.
That said, Mike sees pros and cons certainly to Reddit for applicants, but I think I even more so than Mike see a lot of value in places like Reddit. I think I have referenced myself as hyper-online as an applicant. That was definitely true of me and I made a lot of friends and it felt good to be able to talk about this process that we're all going through. And I think we pretty well avoided for the most part too much comparison, too much anxiety and vitriol or anger or aggressiveness. I think overall it brought me a lot more positive than negative, to be honest. How has your experience been since I know you are on Reddit, you are engaging with online communities, how is your experience with that then?
Lucy: It's been good. I mean, I actually never expected to participate on the Reddit. I think I like first started to look at it last fall when I was thinking about applying and I had an account because I was active on a different subreddit but I just never expected to engage there. But I ended up, I think reading something that participating like actively in social media versus lurking is for some reason psychologically a little bit better for you in terms of the social comparison and stuff. I want to say something or if like someone got in, I want to say congratulations or something like that. And so I started like sneaking in gradually and just posting little by little and like I wouldn't say I'm like the most active person on there, but I think feeling like I'm a part of it and like I'm not like an outsider looking in, but, you know, if someone wants to do that and doesn't feel comfortable commenting, that's really fine. But for me, participating kind of actively in it turned down the social comparison knob for me where it made me a little bit less stressed about the process and stuff.
There are other ways, like I think I've met a lot of wonderful people through the process. I'm in like a discord group chat with a lot of people that are active, and it's just been really nice to like meet other people who are going through this process all with like super different backgrounds and experiences. I'm really excited to see how everyone's cycle goes and I'm ready to see all these people that I've met get into places. And I think turning it a little bit from like a stressful community into a positive community, even just through your own personal participation, really changed how I viewed it.
There’ll always be like people that are bad apples and, you know, people that want to cause drama and have a problem with people. But I think like the majority of people are just on there because many people, we probably don't have a ton of people in our personal lives that are like actively applying right now. Like I have a few people in my life who applied in previous cycles and like they do not want to hear about law school admissions now like they've done their talking. So like this is like really the only place where I can talk to people who really get it. So I really appreciated that at least.
Anna: Yeah, totally. Totally. I think that's an interesting point that you made about the lurking versus actively engaging, and I would be super interested to see where to read that. It does feel intuitively true just based on my experiences, I think that when you're talking about, oh, you were comparing yourself to everybody on Reddit when you were just sort of on the outside looking in. But once you start engaging and once you start like actually making personal connections with humans, they're no longer just oh a faceless person to compare to. They're like an actual person who you like and who you want to see succeed and who you found interesting and who maybe gave you a bit of advice that you found helpful or, I think that kind of thing can be really helpful in terms of the comparisons. Applicants who are online are just one slice of the application pool, and you're not going able to control what the rest of the application pool looks like. You can only control your own. So I don't think the comparing is super helpful but finding that community and finding that group of people where you can just vent about something that happened with your application where you would need to explain like 10 minutes of backstory to anybody else before they would get it. I think that can be super valuable. I think that can be great. So I'm glad to hear that you're having a positive experience with it. That's good to hear.
Is there anything else that we haven't talked about? If you continue to be open to it, I think we're going to keep checking in with you sort of throughout your cycle. I would love to hear back from you once you start to get a few decisions or once you get a couple of interviews. I would love to hear about your interviews. I'm going to say based on our conversation, that I think you're probably going to be a good interviewer. Do you feel like you're a good interviewer?
Lucy: I think I'm okay. I don't know. I think I am a little nervous from what I’ve seen, the law school interviews seem really short compared to a lot of job interviews where it's like maybe like 15 to 20 minutes. So it's a little stressful to feel like you have to condense your story and like your answers to come across well in like that little chunk of time. But I'm trying to be chill about it and not just preemptively about the interviews, especially because it seems like it's usually for like 98% of people, like not as a disqualifying factor unless you really come across as someone who is mean or unhirable or just like very, very odd, which I think I'll be okay in that regard.
Anna: Yeah, I would say you seem nice and hire-able from this conversation.
Lucy: That's good to know.
Anna: All right, cool. I feel like I've gotten to know a lot of sort of where you are now and your thought process. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that has been sort of looming large on your mind throughout this process, any sort of big hurdles or exciting parts of the process that you've gone through so far that we haven't yet talked about?
Lucy: I don't think so. I feel like we covered like all the pieces of the application and stuff that would come to mind for me.
Anna: Okay. Well, we'll check in with you soon. I'm interested to see how your cycle turns out. I think it will be fun, especially with you as you have some high numbers. We can all sort of vicariously live through you and see what's going on with you. The vast majority of people do not get admitted to every single law school that they apply to regardless of their numbers. So I hope that that also can offer some perspective that the world doesn't suddenly become like perfect and easy just because you have super high numbers. And that's not to downplay the importance of the numbers, which, of course, we all know and Spivey Consulting will say openly they are the most important part of your application for a number of complicated reasons, some of which are not the best, some of which are fine. Moving beyond that, I think it'll be interesting to see sort of how your process goes and how you're feeling about it and how it affects you and how you're feeling at various points and then how things ultimately end up. So I will be excited to talk to you next and excited to see what comes next. Anything further to add?
Lucy: No, I think that's all great to me. I mean, I'm also excited to see where I get in. I sufficiently like managed my expectations. But I understand I'm competitive and I'll definitely get a few bites, but I've seen how hard it can be over the past few years, and I understand that at this point I feel like I've done everything I can for now. It's in the arms of some admissions officer who’s maybe like watching like Grey's Anatomy on their couch on like a Sunday.
Anna: Well, I think that you probably did a lot in your application that will make them sit up and pay attention and have to rewind later to see that part of Grey's Anatomy that they missed. So it was good talking to you. And we will talk in a couple of months probably.
Lucy: Yeah! Well, I hope you have a good rest of your Wednesday.
Anna: Thanks. You too!
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