Want to Talk About Math Anxiety?

Today was interesting. I'll start with the end:

It was a good day.

I hardly slept last night because of a terrible headache.  Cold medication at 6 am made me feel like I was on serious drugs by 11 am when PWNtheSAT was ready to get to work.

He suggested that he observe me doing a timed math section so that he could get to the bottom of "why I'm so slooooooow." (Quotes, itals, and bold font, all took place in my head.)

Chapstick, chocolate, "SAD" lamp ... check check check 

I said go, he set the stopwatch.

I don't know if it was the lack of sleep or the cold medication or the SAD lamp, or the fact that someone was watching me do math -- but to say that 10,000 SATs would be more relaxing than those 25 minutes would not do justice to the experience.

That's the bad news.

 

Here's the good news:

1) I believe the experience resulted in useful information.

Do you know that it took me 6 excruciating minutes of wrestling with this problem to NOT get to the bottom of it?

I'm not even going to tell you all the wrong roads I took.

After the bell, I learned how to "MacGyver It."  (I waited until he left before Googling "MacGyver" -- which I just realized I didn't even spell right on my recipe card.)

 

2)  I learned (again, after the bell), that the shortest way to a Counting & Probability answer is probably to list them all (as illogical as that seems with the clock ticking).

 

 

3) I learned that your algebro doesn't have to be so scary.....

 

 

4) And, I learned that you don't always have to check all of the answers.  If you find the right one on the first try, Move On.  You can save precious seconds.

 

 

P.S.  If you find that my renditions PWNtheSAT's explanations are useful, please let me know.  There are many more where these came from.  I will post them on the Solutions Page.

 

Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis