Ok, now hear me out – daily GAMSAT essay practice is so important, it’s not funny

Imma explain further, but here’s to you Too-Busy peeps first

TL;DR / Short Version For Busy-Bodies First

So, it is known that some Gamsters are all like… 

“I go to uni full-time AND work two jobs AND gym daily”

or 

“I have young children, dogs, and I’m a carer for family members”

or 

“I’m on so many club and association exec teams that listing them all would make me throw up”

…and are high-achieving and/or high-self-opinionated.

You ppl probably don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll include the TL;DR version here about daily GAMSAT essay practice:

Write 2 practice essays every day, around 10:30am, under exam conditions.

Start daily practice at least 1 to 2 months before the exam.

Do a few exam-condition essay sessions ASAP to see how much practice you need.

That’s it.

If you want to read the logic behind the above advice, or you just enjoy reading my rants, continue on!

The Long Version About Daily GAMSAT Essay Practice

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Heya Gamster Hamsters!

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Today, we’re talking about writing practice essays for GAMSAT every day.

(⌐O_O)
But do I really have to?

(^ΦдΦ^)
Why yes you do, Taro Gamtaro, and let’s go over why it’s important.

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But before that, let’s address why Gamsters resist practising essays.

Why People Hate Practicing Essays For GAMSAT

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It’s simple really: We don’t like doing things that make us feel bad.

(^ΦдΦ^)
And practicing essays bring ppl face to face with just how much they suck.

See, with the rest of GAMSAT prep, there’s always that aspect of passiveness, of plausible deniability.

For example, when studying textbooks, there’s always “I’m reading these words, and I’m understanding these words, therefore I must be making progress, yay”, and when doing MCQs, there’s always “I have no idea, I’ll just guess”. 

The lack of accountability is what dulls the bad feelings: You can just stare at a page and ???¹ and make progress, or shade in a random box and ???² and get it right.

And most of the time, you’re not even sure how much you learnt, or what you directly answered right or wrong… 

But because there’s no direct link between your actions and decisions – and poor progress or result, you don’t feel bad about yourself.

Essay-writing doesn’t work like that.

You have to actively choose a quote, form an essay topic, select ideas and logic and examples to write about, take good brainstorming notes, structure it all somehow, and transfer your thoughts into writing – quickly enough, and legibly enough. 

There is nothing passive about any of that, and you are accountable every step of the way

(^ΦдΦ^)
And you could suck any step of the way, or every step of the way: 

• You could get writer’s block, and end up with literally one line³ for your entire essay
• You could fail to come up with effective arguments and engaging examples, leading to a beige vanilla me-too essay
• You could take no notes or meh notes, and waste time trying to remember what to write, or rewriting to include missed points
• You could fail at time management, and run out of time before the punchline of your essay⁴
• You could have shitty handwriting, and fail S2 by default, because examiners can’t read you super-promising doctor’s scribbles

What’s worse, there’s nowhere to hide, because bad essays are just like hardcore porn – you just know it when you’re in its glorious presence – so if you wrote an essay that only a mother could love, there’s no need to take extra steps (like checking your work, or asking for a second opinion), you just naturally feel sorry about yourself.

(^ΦдΦ^)
But just because writing essays makes you feel like you’re going to die, doesn’t mean it’s something to avoid.

Why Daily GAMSAT Essay Practice Is Important

In fact, embracing the suck is the most important thing for Section 2, because it is the surest sign that growth is happening: Just like with exercising, if it doesn’t cause any discomfort, you’re probably not making progress.

In fact, practicing GAMSAT essays is the best way to get better at Section 2, for a whole host of reasons:

Daily GAMSAT Essay Practice: Mental Preparation

When you first start Reading Time, and see all the quotes, your first response will be to panic:

You haven’t given any of the quotes time and consideration yet, so you’ll naturally have no thoughts about any of the quotes, and you’ll equate that with not being able to think of anything for the quotes. 

You’ll get stressed, and therefore Writer’s Block is likely to drop by, and your mind goes blank. 

Then the time limit hits you, with the seconds counting down – tick tock, tick tock

And you’re like “shit, I’m going to waste an hour of my life that I’ll never get back struggling to write barely anything, the essays won’t be good – and they’ll never be good, not even for the actual GAMSAT. Shit, SHIT!”, and the catastrophising will avalanche until you end up at the foot of the mountain that is your self esteem, in a sobbing mess.

(⌐O_O)
That’s intense

(^ΦдΦ^)
Why did you say that like it has nothing to do with you? Have you not been practicing your essays?

After this happens a few times, or after you settle the fuck down, you’ll habituate to the situation, and be able to kick-into-gear those essay-writing processes that you’ve drilled, and start writing goop [(⌐O_O) Ewww (^ΦдΦ^) Everything a body needs] that vaguely resembles essays. 

With time, the essays will get more and more readable. 

With more time still, writing essays will feel as natural as walking⁵.

Practicing essays basically prepares you mentally for Section 2: It desensitises you to the panic of inexperience, and gives you the time and space to trust that there are good ideas and stories within you, to get familiar with the essay-writing process, and to become confident in your ability to lay whole essays down on paper.

When it comes to building confidence, nothing beats practice.

Daily GAMSAT Essay Practice: Writing Fluency

Ok look, this is the 21st century, and you’ve probably grown up doing more typing than writing.

Hell, most of you can probably thumb-type faster than you can write – and thumb-typing sucks.

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That said, auto-correct and auto-complete helps a lot

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That reminds me – you know those COVID contact tracing forms? Setting up Text Replacement with your details will save you alot of time

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O rly

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I’ve set it up so that when I type aa, it auto-fills my address – you can do that with your full name, email, number, and so on

And unless you do some degree that requires a whole lot with pen-and-paper action (like Law), you’ve probably not done a whole lot of writing throughout uni, since you can use a laptop to take notes, do assignments, and even take exams.

This can be a bit of a problem for Section 2, which requires pen and paper, not keyboard and mouse:

• Your writing speed and stamina could be so low, that you could have the entire 2 essays in your head when writing time starts, and not know if you’ll finish writing in time
• Your writing could be unreadable, and ACER needs to break out the forensic handwriting analyst just to try to give you any points⁶
• You could be so unfamiliar with writing long-form, that you can’t deal with difficulties with editing⁷, and have to learn about strategies to do with writing rather than typing⁸

By practicing essays everyday, you are conditioning your hands to write quickly and legibly for an hour (which is the bare minimum if you want to stand a chance), and to think in the specific ways that keeps stuff in your head to write about, which means you can keep your pen moving at all times, and don’t have to constantly rewrite things.

Best Practices For Daily GAMSAT Essay Practice

So, now you know the reasons to practice GAMSAT essays every day, let’s go over HOW to do it most effectively for GAMSAT prep.

Practice Essays Every Day

My first recommendation is to practice GAMSAT essays every day. 

This might sound a bit much, especially if you don’t like essays, or writing with pen and paper.

Here are reasons why it’s worth it.

The Exam Weighting Doesn’t Lie

If you break down the proportion of points allocated to each section, you’ll notice that General and Organic Chemistry combined is worth 20%⁹ of the GAMSAT, whereas Section 2 accounts for 25% of the GAMSAT.

Also, many medical schools have a minimum score for each of the 3 sections (usually 50). With that in mind, note that the chemistries are worth 40% of Section 3, whereas S2 is worth 100% of Section 2 (duh).

So, it sounds like S2 should get probably as much attention as the two chemistry topics – if not more.

That said, I bet that you spend hours every day during GAMSAT prep studying General and Organic Chemistry.

Putting things in this perspective, 1 hour per day prepping for Section 2 suddenly sounds quite reasonable, doesn’t it?

Use It Or Lose It

When you write an essay, you learn lessons.

Now, lessons only make you get better if you practice them:

You could learn about all the best practices for essay-writing, but if you don’t practice them, you might get to the exam, and

• Have already naturally forgotten about them, or 
• Get nervous and forget about them, or 
• Get nervous and revert to your normal suboptimal writing habits – which is functionally the same as forgetting the best practice

The more you practice, the less likely the above stuff-ups are to happen.

You Level Up By Grinding

Also, as you get more experience, you start learning lessons that are only available because you’ve gotten better, or actually implemented the lessons. 

For example:

• You finish two essays within the time limit, but they only touch on the theme vaguely, so you learn how to identify and address the theme properly
• You notice you waste too much time trying to remember your points, so you write down notes the next time
• Then you notice that notes are hard to refer to to find where you’re up to in the essay, so you use mindmaps next time
• Then you notice that you can split mindmaps into left and right sides, for points for or against the essay topic
• Then you notice that your essays are a bit too mainstream or one-sided, so you try to think of more non-conventional points
• Then you realise that you should do this for all quotes, and rather than just choose essay topics where you have a lot of points (but they’re mainly mainstream), you choose topics where you have less points (but they’re “better”, in that they’re more insightful, or surprising, or impactful, or balanced, or controversial)
• Then you end up with more interesting essays, but you realise that the points don’t connect well with one another, and you spend the brainstorming phase not only on thinking of better points, but also on how the points best fit together with one another
• And so on….

Notice that the above lessons are sequential – you gain later lessons only in the context of applying previous lessons.

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This is literally how gaining EXP eventually leads to levelling up

This also brings up another reason you can’t skip practice: Even when you know all the essay lessons by the exam, there is a huge difference between not having practiced them enough, and having practiced them enough.

In the former case, you’ll be spending time and effort trying to remember all the lessons, and trying to apply all lessons at the same time, WHILE trying to write 2 essays in 60 minutes, and this will overwhelm and confuse the fuck out of you

Here, the lessons which are supposed to be helpful, ironically become a burden. 

In the latter case, all the lessons are already inside you, so you can actually use them – and use them without effort – to write the best essay you’re capable of.

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Think of it like a language exam: Things are going to go a lot smoother when the vocab just rolls off the tongue, rather than you trying to remember vocab while trying to use it properly

When To Start the Daily GAMSAT Essay Practice Thing

This depends on your background: If you’re not super fluent in English, and you study something where writing humanities stuff isn’t super-familiar to you, I would practice essays every day as early as possible, and when you get to a good level of confidence, you can space the essay practice to once every half-week or full-week, until 2 or 3 months before the exam, where you crank things up to essays every day again.

If your English is native-level, you study humanities where there’s tons of essays all the time, or you blog or write on a regular basis, and you can just “write an essay” when you need to, I would still suggest doing 2 or 3 practice S2 sessions right now, to double-check that you’re really as good as you think [(^ΦдΦ^) You think you’re hot shit, hey?]. If you actually are all that and more, then there’s no point starting too early, I’d suggest drilling daily essays 1 to 2 months before the exam.

If you’re somewhere in between, I suggest doing a few S2 drills to see how good you are, and practicing intensely if you need the improvement, and otherwise practicing every 1 or 2 weeks, until 2 or 3 months before the exam, where you start drilling daily GAMSAT essay practice again.

Note that I always recommend daily GAMSAT essays practice, for the period leading up to exam – especially no later than 1 to 2 months before – no matter what level the Gamster is at already. 

This is because essay practice isn’t just about improving essay-writing, but also for conditioning: Brainstorming and writing 2 essays in 1 hour – without research – is not something that most ppl are used to¹⁰; and if you don’t train for it – and keep up the training, you can’t guarantee any relevant level of performance.

So keep up the training.

Practice at Roughly the Same Time as Section 2 of the Exam

When you’re practicing essays, practice around the same time every day.

Specifically, around 10:30am: The reason is that it’s roughly the same time that Section 2 starts in the actual exam:

• According to ACER’s information booklet (in Section 4, On Test Day), 8:15am is the time candidates should arrive
• If we allow for the sheer amount of ppl getting checked, ppl putting non-permitted stuff back into their bags, ppl leaving their bags in the allocated area, ppl getting seated, examiners checking their desk for non-permitted items, examiners handing out S1 test papers, examiners making announcements, and spare time for late-comers, 9:00am is a reasonable time for the GAMSAT/Section 1 to start
• Section 1 is 6min reading time, 64min writing time, which totals 70min, and ends at 10:10am.
• Accounting for S1 papers to be collected, and S2 papers to be distributed, S2 is likely to start around 10:20am
• We further round it to 10:30am to make it easy for your schedule

The reason to practice around that time, is to condition you so you can write essays at that particular time, no matter if you’re stressed out, hangry, hung-over, sleep-deprived, not in the mood, unable to find your lucky pen, etc.

You might even find that your brain becomes more creative at 10:30am, because it gets used to brainstorming at that time¹¹.

Treat Every Practice As If It Were The Real Thing

The last recommendation, is to take every essay practice session under exam conditions.

By that, I mean:

• Silence your phone, don’t have it on you, and don’t answer it or use it for the whole hour.
• Don’t let anyone distract you with questions, errands, or chats. Better yet, just lock yourself away somewhere out of reach¹²
• Keep count using a non-smart, analogue watch¹³, without using the alarm or countdown function (even if it has one).
• Do not stop the countdown for anything. If you scrap your essay halfway through the hour, you don’t get to restart the timer. If you have to go to the toilet, you better haul ass cos Writing Time ain’t nobody’s bitch and ain’t waiting for no man/woman.
• The opposite is also true: The time is up when the time is up. If you didn’t factor in the conclusion into the time limit, that’s just too bad.
• Do not look online or through your notes for inspiration.
• Do not write or make any markings during Reading Time.
• Choose 1 quote from Task A, and 1 quote from Task B – you can’t choose both quotes from the same task simply because you have writer’s block for one task and not the other.
• When you present yourself the 2 sets of 5 quotes for the practice session, stick with them.
• And most importantly, do not give up. If you literally can’t write anything, I want you to sit there for the whole hour until you squeeze out 2 essays, or until the time is up. 
  • The only context in which you’re allowed to cut the session short, is if you write two essays that you’re so confident about, that you would be willing to stop work completely during the actual exam¹⁴.

Reason: So Bad Things Don’t Happen

You might feel that the above is overkill, and it probably is.

Then again, overkill is the way to test and train discipline.

And you will need discipline, because you are not going to get a free pass for anything during the GAMSAT; and if you get used to giving yourself concessions during practice, you’re conditioning yourself to cop out during the GAMSAT – and that’s a bad thing, cos if you cop out during the GAMSAT, your performance is fucked:

• The quotes aren’t exactly to your liking, so you mentally disengage as your mind expects to reshuffle the quotes, or pick both quotes from the same task, or look up the topics for ideas – then you realise that you can’t do any of those things cos it’s a real exam, and you haven’t developed any reliable way to hit your brain-pinjata to make dem sweet, sweet ideas fall out 🍬
• You haven’t been watching the time regularly, and you’ve been writing at a leisurely pace, because you’re used to having your phone’s countdown timer to glance at, or you simply give yourself more time when you need it during practice – and you hear the exam adjudicator announce there’s 10 minutes left, and you notice you haven’t started brainstorming Essay 2 yet
• You leave one essay half-finished, and the other one in brainstorming stage, because you’re used to going to do something else when you run out of steam during essay practice – then you notice that this time, what you hand in is what you’ll be scored on (for $500+ and months of time that used to belong to you), and you don’t know how to force yourself to finish essays that you no longer want to write, to an acceptable standard

There’s a martial arts saying: Cry in the dojo, laugh on the battlefield – kick your own ass when it doesn’t count, so you can kick ass when it counts.

(⌐O_O)
Then couldn’t one reason that it always counts?

(^ΦдΦ^)
Careful, if you’re not careful with your questions, you might ascend to the next level of consciousness

(⌐O_O)
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly…

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The nimbus is strong

Reason: So Good Things Get To Happen

You’ve probably heard of the saying that extreme situations bring out the worst in ppl, and the best in ppl.

Likewise, practicing under severe conditions isn’t just for averting the worst in you – it’s also for discovering the best in you:

When you practice under exam conditions, you’ll realise different things:

• You CAN actually think of ideas once you stop panicking
• You CAN write essays from start to finish
• You CAN write faster
• You’re a better writer than you give yourself credit for
• The combination of pressure and purpose and action can push you into the real-life Limit Break that is the Flow State

These are things you won’t experience unless you practice seriously; and when you experience them, you’ll understand that you are more capable under pressure than you think or feel. 

These realisations will help build your confidence that is based on evidence¹⁵, for the section most feared and avoided by Gamsters.

In Summary

That was a whole lot of words about such simple advice. Here it is, once again:

• Practice Section 2 by writing 2 essays, every day, around 10:30am, under exam conditions. 
• Daily GAMSAT essay practice should be started no later than 1 or 2 months before the exam, and essay practice should still be happening before this intensive period too. 
• No matter how far away the exam is, Gamsters should always do a few drills to know how much they should be practicing.

So, what are you waiting for – go write some essays today!

Want More Essay Strategies?

The upcoming bonus ebook, Write Essays Right, will teach you:

• How to unlock your creativity
• How to find 3~4 Super-Weapon Ideas that you can apply to all essay topics
• How to prep during Reading Time so you can power through Writing Time without stopping
• …And more

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Leave this field empty if you’re human:

1. Osmosis (or rather, Reverse Osmosis): Sucks that it don’t work like that though, which is why you need to eat dem green veges and do dem practice questions.

2. Appeal to probability: Because there’s a chance you could get it right, you feel that equals a certainty you will get it right. It’s why gambling is big business. Maybe you’re a genetically mutated higher being, and the fallacy isn’t that strong in your mind – but still, the possibility of getting a blind guess right makes you feel better about yourself and the MCQ.

3. “I’m sorry, but things didn’t work out. Sincerely yours.”

(⌐O_O)
Did you break up with your essay… via text?

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Hey that’s a good one.

4.
(^ΦдΦ^)
For a punchline of an essay.

(⌐O_O)
That’s so mean.

5. If you’ve ever hurt your leg, or got a leg cramp, you’ll suddenly become really nervous about walking without holding onto stuff. 

This is a throw-back to the toddler days when you learnt how to walk: When you think about it, walking upright is downright risky – mess it up, and you could fall all the way down onto your face (and die) (BBC Sherlock season 3 spoiler ahead). Yet, nearly all of us eventually learnt how to walk upright normally, and don’t give it a second thought [(^ΦдΦ^) or two shits] most of the time.

6.
(^ΦдΦ^)
And I.D. you so they can put you on a list.

7. Writing isn’t like typing: You can’t just (1) insert a line here, (2) change the grammar there, and (3) rewrite that paragraph over there. 

Instead, you need to:

(1) Draw an arrow on top and add that line but in a smaller font
(2) Scribble out that partial or whole word and rewrite it but squeeze it in before the next word
(3) Cross out the scrapped paragraph, and write the new version underneath. 

Oh you’ve written a bunch under the scrapped paragraph already – it’s more complicated then:

Cross out the scrapped paragraph. Finish writing the current paragraph. Write the new version of the scrapped paragraph under the current paragraph. Draw a box around the new-version paragraph, and draw an arrow up to where the scrapped paragraph is. Restart the essay under all that. Phew!

8. E.g. Since writing is slower and more effort than typing, and edits are harder to do and also look stupid, it pays to do what carpenters do, and have a good idea of what you’re writing, before you write it – I’m not just talking about writing down a general structure of the essay before you start writing, I mean actually having the current and next few paragraphs formed in your head, while you write.

9. S3 is worth 50% of the GAMSAT, and the two chemistry subjects are worth 40% of S3, and 100% x 0.5 x 0.4 = 20%.

10. Sure, journalists may have to pull articles out of their ass on a deadline regularly, but even they benefit from interviews and tip-offs and research. As a Gamster, the only reference is whatever you can pull out of your numbskull.

11. That, or it feels sorry for you, and wants to make things easier for you – cos god knows you need the help.

12. If you for some reason die during your daily GAMSAT essay practice, and it’s treated as a locked room mystery by the police, then you know you’ve done it right [(^ΦдΦ^) Be proud of that].

13. No, it’s not just no phones, but no digital or smart watches too – and no functions: According to page 13 of ACER’s GAMSAT info booklet: “Clocks are provided in the test room. You may wear an analogue wristwatch, and any alarm or stopwatch features must be switched off. Digital and smart watches are prohibited”.

14. Like, you don’t feel the need to add anything, rewrite anything, or check anything. You’re literally like my work here is done, I need to return to my ppl now.

15. And this kind of confidence is stronger and more sustainable than confidence built upon blind optimism and faith.