#perfectscoreproject

[debbiestier]

I’m Suffering From “Decision Fatigue”

About a month ago, five people sent me the following article:

 Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?

I usually take it as a sign of something important when more than 3 people send me the same article -- so I did what I do with all the other important articles (i.e. print it out and carry it around the house with me for a month).

I finally got to this one last night, and wow, yes, I do suffer from "Decision Fatigue"  -- big time.  This is it, exactly:

"No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price. It’s different from ordinary physical fatigue — you’re not consciously aware of being tired — but you’re low on mental energy. The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts, usually in either of two very different ways."

I think this is why it feels particularly hard to be a "good mother" after taking a full 4+ hour practice SAT.  I'm sure my children know this on some level, which is why they work on me for months about important issues such as bellybutton rings, or new computers, and then pounce when they sense I'm weakest.

This usually results in one of two outcomes:

1) I finally snap and say "NO!" because I just can't take it anymore, and then my daughter calls my father to complain that I'm not listening to her.

Or,

2) I say yes because I'm just plain old worn out -- or, as I now know from this article, I'm suffering from "a syndrome."  It's times like these that I've said  "yes" to such things as a trip to Italy, when I haven't even paid my bills.

The article says that the more mental work you do all day, the more prone you are to making dubious choices late in the day.

When there were fewer decisions, there was less decision fatigue. Today we feel overwhelmed because there are so many choices. 

I love that all my symptoms have a label.

Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

#PerfectScoreProject

[debbiestier]

Did Someone Say Contest?

Please don't tell me I'm going to win PWNtheSAT's SAT Question Writing Contest by default.

Am I?  That's no fun.

Come on people, submit your questions.  I'll try yours if you try mine.

Here's the one I submitted (typed, per the rules):

And here is the one I was going to throw in the hopper -- which I still may -- but first I need to figure out how to type up Absolute Value notations.

Submissions still open until tomorrow.  Akil, I expect to see you there.

Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

#PerfectScoreProject

[debbiestier]

What’s Gender Got To Do With It?*

*Apropos of nothing, do you hear Tina Turner when you read that line?

I don't know what gender's got to do with it -- exactly -- but I do know it's gotsomething to do with it, and, I imagine that campaigns like Forever 21's "Allergic to Algebra" are not helping matters.

I know that when I read quotes such as these two from Sian Beilock's book, Choke, they remind me of the day PWNtheSAT taught me to MacGyver It:

“Girls are more likely to work all the way through a math problem…..boys tend to be more comfortable taking shortcuts than girls….”

"Boys' tendency to rely on more flexible problem-solving approaches doesn't just occur at the high school level; it happens as early as elementary school."

I know that girls have lower math SAT scores than do boys -- and if I'm to believe Beilock's book (which I do), this discrepancy is not biological.

And, I know that boys outscored girls 13 to 1 in a "talent identification" program back in the early 1980s that required 13 year olds to take the SAT-M.  This lead researchers to conclude that boys had more innate math ability than girls, which turned out not to be true.

I know that when I took IQ and assessment tests last month, Dr. Stein told me afterwards that he was secretly cheering for me to let loose a little.  Apparently I was more precise about those instructions than most, which  costs me points in the end. (All I know is that when he'd instruct me to "be sure," I made sure that I was sure.)

Note to self for next IQ Test: Ditch that good girl letter-of-the-law rule follower and try to channel my inner MacGyver.

If you want to learn more about the role of gender and the SAT, you must readChoke. It's a fascinating book about how the brain works under pressure, and cites a lot of fascinating research, including a whole chapter on the role of gender.

Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

#PerfectScoreProject

[debbiestier]

2 1/2 weeks to go until next SAT.  I should know by now not to say this, but I can't hep myself: I feel like I'm making progress (and my next sentence should be "feelings aren't facts....")

[debbiestier]

Canary in the Coal Mine

I've always identified as part rebel (like it's a census box). I get into things on the early side, but, I can also tend to change my mind once everyone gets to the party (nothing intentional, or personal, by the way).

Which brings me to "learning and technology."

I was on that band-wagon early, shaking those online learning pom poms years ago.

But that was before I needed to actually learn something from those online courses. Technology for learning something new and challenging took on a whole new meaning as soon as I needed to make quantified progress.

I found it hard to connect with the material on a computer, and I'd feel distracted and bored.  I even got to the point of feeling dread when it was time to "learn online" - and I never feel that way about the SATs. I couldn't find that "Oh My God 7 Letter Scrabble Word" sensation, which is how my whole obsession with the SAT began.

I kept wondering, is it "me?" Or is it "online learning?"

I waxed on about my skepticism, and people wrote back that maybe I'm "too old" (thanks), or that I'd taken the wrong courses.

Ok, maybe.

But then came a story on the front page of the New York Times last Sunday, "The Class Room of the Future," that made me want find a New York City rooftop so I could stand on top and shout loudly: "I told you soooooo....."

I could pull-quote the whole darn article because it's as if the writer went inide my head and took dictation, but I'll just pull a few choice quotes:

"There's a connection between the physical hand on the paper and the words on the page," she said.  "It's intimate."

There are times in Kyrene when the technology seems to allow students to disengage from the learning: They are left at computers to perform a task but wind up playing around, suggesting , as some researchers have found, that computers can distract and not instruct.

I'll end with this thought:

I do believe that technology will have a legitimate role in the process of learning in the future -- but I haven't experienced it personally, yet, and I was not surprised to read that there's no proof in the pudding for all those billions of dollars that have been spent so far.

Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

#PerfectScoreProject

[debbiestier]

Who Knew?

When I started this cockamamie project last January, I thought I'd be all, "Kaplan".....and ...."Gruber".......

Eight months in, I'm like, "Kumon" and "CogMed."

I'll share with you now the Cliff Notes edition of, Who Knew (I didn't):

I'm not sure I even knew what Kumon was before 6 months ago.  Today, if I could re-wind the clock 10 years, I'd have my kids enrolled by the time they could say "Rugrat" -- certainly well before the little munchkins knew how to talk back.

Hard work?  What is hard work?  I have no idea.  Yes, I read Outliers and know all about those 10,000 hours.  What I did not know, was how many hours there are in a year before I gave myself "a year" to get a perfect SAT score. (There are, incidentally, 8,765, including those you sleep.)

If you said to me on January 1, 2011, "Debbie, do you think you're smart?" I would have said "Nope. I'm middle of the road. Joelle Bloggs."  Turns out I am smart......but I have gaping "deficiencies."   Oh my god....I hobbled through my first 45.5 years with practically no visual recall (for starters). And, I wouldn't have even known that had I not spent hourswith Dr. Stein doing IQ and assessment tests.  (I'm feeling so sorry for myself at the moment.)

And guess what else?  I need glasses!  Had Dr. Stein not asked me at least a dozen times whether or not I'd seen an eye doctor, I'd still be clinging to my post-lasik glasses-free identity.

I did not expect my teenagers to "rebel" in the midst of my Suzuki-style SAT project. (I'm laughing as I type this because they were punctilious in their developmental timing. What can I say......I was blinded by enthusiasm.)

And finally, my favorite wonder of them all:

I love writing SAT questions.  Obsessed.  And, I think it could be the secret sauce.  If you can push through the initial pain, there is a lot of fun to be had.

In fact, I love it so much that I am re-posting my favorite two questions because I need the closure of stumping people, and hardly anyone attempted to solvethem.

So voila, my favorite two questions.  And if you would be so kind as to give me the satisfaction of some answers, I'd be eternally grateful and could put this behind me.

1.) Shaded Region with Triangle.  I spent hours on this little baby. There are so many little gems nestled in there, I can hardly believe it myself (though PWN did kick the tires on this one quite a few times).  It is my chef d'oeuvre, as far as I'm concerned.  Please, humor me and try it.

2. Function Table Question.  PWN says this is his favorite.  It actually only took me about 10 minutes to write, but, my son gave me a key piece of information. Embarrassed, I will admit that someone in the comments of this post asked about the answer, and I hadn't written it down (gulp), and it took me about a half hour to figure it out again.  I forgot how to do it (though I was under stress at the time.) Crazy.  I finally figured it out again, but how embarrassing.

Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

#PerfectScoreProject

[debbiestier]

bird by bird

I been collecting questions and making flashcards out of them over the last few months, but now I want to take them down, bird by bird, before I'm "immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead."*

They're all valid and deserve thoughtful responses -- questions such as:

Have my opinions and ideas on this project changed?

Do I still believe that it is possible that I can achieve a perfect score?

Have my ideas on influencing my children changed?  Do I feel that I've influenced them at all...either in the negative or positive sense.

Am I starting to believe that the SAT is more or less important than I first thought?

What were my parents' expectations of me when I was in school?

How did I respond to those expectations?

Did I push back? (Short answer: You have no idea.)

Do I wish my parents had pushed me more?

What do I think I've missed out on in life because I didn't do as well as I would have liked to in school?

.....and on and on and on.....

But I'm going to start with one from the easier pile:

How important do you think yoga has been to working through the SATs?

.....to which I responded:

YES YES YES, Yoga Helps.  Enormously.

I didn't have time to find more words, though I did find these from last January, a few weeks before my first SAT since 1982:

My anxiety about this SAT is so extreme that I committed to going to yoga every single day.  I had an epiphany in the midst of chants and oms and happy baby poses that the best thing I can do is to figure out how to relax.

Ok, that's a start, but I still wanted to say more.

The words I was looking for were delivered by my UPS guy today, in a vessel called Zen in the Art of the SAT.  As soon as cracked the book, I started with the:

"Exactly!"  "Right."  "That's it!"

So instead of me wracking my brain, I'm just going to go with, yeah, what they said:

With the SAT, it's not enough to know the material.  To excel on the SAT you must be confident about your ability to read carefully and solve problems -- even strange, inscrutable ones -- under timed conditions.  That's what makes the SAT so intimidating. You can't just memorize the material and then regurgitate it; you have to act in the moment......

As you learn how to ace the SAT, you will gain a deeper understanding of yourself....You will learn to do your best on the SAT not through any tricks or secret formulas, but rather by getting a firm handle on the workings of your own mind.

More to come from me about this book (highly recommend).

*Quote comes from Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.  If you haven't read this book yet, you must.

Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

#perfectscoreproject

[debbiestier]

This is going to sound ridiculously obvious, but given that it took me 7 months to figure out, I'm just going to put it out there:

Find a quiet, remote place to spread out, organize, and concentrate.

I know, it's so simple, right?

Until a few weeks ago, I was trying to study in the middle of the house with kids tripping all over me.  I could never find a thing; I was disorganized, discombobulated so frustrated!

Typical scene, any given day:

Me: Pacing between the living room, kitchen, and dining room in search of some little sticky note where I'd written the solution to some long elusive problem.

Finally, I'd find it.  Thrilled, I'd stand at the kitchen counter trying to solve some similar problem.  And then, finally, on the cusp of "understanding," ........boom:

"Can you make me lunch?"

And then it'd be gone.....my thought......evaporated......just like that.

Now I have my own little rabbit hole, where I'm so happy, I might never come out.

#PerfectScoreProject