Why Students Need to Stop Studying for the PSAT

 I do more than ADHD coaching.  I’m also a tutor.  I work on the Wyzant platform (if you are looking for me) and I tutor high school and college students in English and the humanities.  Fall is a busy time for tutors.  The students have started new classes and it takes about a month to start falling behind or to realize you are in over your head.  It’s also time for college admission essays.  On top of that, it’s time for the PSAT.  I hate the PSAT.  Well, not the test.  I have problems with the test, but I don’t hate it.  I hate how it’s handled.  Many schools just tell students when they will be taking the PSAT and they do that on short notice, unlike the SAT or ACT, which is scheduled and planned for months in advance.  Which isn’t to say that nobody knows it’s coming.  It’s coming.  You’ve known that since 7th grade.  Somewhere between mid-October and mid-November, the PSAT will be given.  It happens every year.  You know what else happens every year?  Requests to help students cram for the PSAT.  Students find out that the PSAT will be given in two weeks or one week or (as happened to a student of mine this semester) two days.  This seems really unfair.  It is certainly shocking.  It definitely causes a lot of anxiety.  But it’s not unfair.  And here’s why it’s not unfair: You can’t study for the PSAT. 

I know, I’m gonna get backlash from that.  But it’s true.  It’s just not that kind of test.  It’s not a test of knowledge; it’s a test of skills.  Now, it is perfectly possible to improve one’s reading, writing, and math skills.  But that isn’t really done by studying; it’s done by practice.  If you want to be a better reader, read.  If you want to be a better writer, write.  If you want to be better at math… okay, study the formulas.  But once you know them, then all you can do is do the math.  What you absolutely can’t do is cram.  There’s nothing to cram.  You can practice and should, but that should just be part of learning.  If you can’t pick out the main idea of a reading passage, there’s nothing that can be done in 72 hours that will change that.  Just like an IQ test, the PSAT measures how you think and process information.

The PSAT is like an IQ test in another very important way.  They’re both meaningless.  The IQ test has no scientific basis and cannot measure how well a person can learn and the PSAT has no scientific basis and cannot measure how well a person has learned.  Really, the only thing the PSAT measures is how well you might do on the SAT.  And that’s all it’s supposed to measure.  That P stands for Practice.  The PSAT is there to help you learn what areas you might want to improve before taking the SAT.  But you can’t study for the SAT either.  Which is why the PSAT is given at least one year in advance of the SAT.  To give students time to improve their skills, not learn new material.
And not doing well on the PSAT or SAT does not predict college (or life) success.  If you want to know how well you will do in college, then look at how well you did in high school.  College isn’t a collection of standardized tests; it’s a collection of classes.  GPA is a better indicator of how well a student will do in college.  But even that… college is different than high school.  In many ways, it’s more flexible and more adaptable.  Students who don’t do well in high school may thrive in college because they get to create their schedule, pick their classes, determine their own path.  And some who do well in high school flounder in college for the same reasons.  What is most likely to help students succeed in college is support.  If a student goes to a college that fits their passions and personality, if a student has friends and family to lean on in the hard times, if a student takes advantage of the services colleges provide, that is going to determine if they thrive.
Let’s take some of the pressure off of our high school students.  Stop studying for the PSAT.  Use those scores for what they are meant for, to see if there are areas where skills can be improved.  Work on improving those skills, if you like.  But the PSAT does not determine a child’s future.  Stop acting like it does.

In Favor of Procrastination: Why Putting Off Tasks Makes You More Productive

 Rather aptly, I keep putting off writing this post.  It’s been sitting on my to-do list for more than two weeks.  And I am supposed to write a post at least once a week.  So my social media coach tells me.  (Yeah, coaches have coaches) I’ve had the skeleton to this post, but I just haven’t gotten around to turning that into a full post.  

 

Procrastination gets such a bad rap. But like most things in life, it is neutral.  It’s all in how you use it.  Procrastination lets you know that you are not working at your peak performance. Putting something off can let you come back to it with renewed energy and fresh eyes.   Forcing yourself to plow through something when you have lost focus is not going to produce the high-quality results you want.  Sometimes plowing is a necessity.  Sometimes there are deadlines or other people are waiting on you or you plow through the boring parts to get to the good stuff.  But if it’s not a necessity, then stick that work in a drawer and come back to it.  Let your mind think about something else.  Take that break or work on something else.  When you come back to the original activity, you will be able to really see it.  It’s like when you spend half an hour looking for your keys, only to have someone else find them, sitting out in the open on a table you’ve walked past a dozen times during your search.  The more we look at something, especially if there is an urgency or emotional element, the less likely we are to really see it.   

It gives you time to consider a problem or come up with a more creative solution.   Thinking about something else can sometimes spark ideas.  Archimedes was tasked by the king to figure out how much gold was in the royal crown.  You see, he thought the metalsmith had cheated him by mixing the gold with silver.  Archimedes pondered this conundrum but was unable to come up with a solution.  He grew frustrated and decided to put the problem aside and go take a bath.  Hey, who doesn’t like a nice bath at the end of a hard day?  Archimedes filled the tub and when he got in it, water splashed over the side.  He yelled, “Eureka!” and went running, naked, from the bathhouse and down the streets, screaming about water displacement, volume, and oh, how the king was going to love him.  Okay, that probably never happened.  But that’s the story and it has a good moral.  Go take a bath.  Or go for a run (clothed, please).  Or play a game.  Or just sit and observe the world around you.  You may not come up with a physics axiom, but you might be inspired to find what you need to move forward. 

Procrastination reduces stress by letting you know that you need rest and rejuvenation.  Your body and brain can only take so much.  Stress reduces efficiency.  Let’s say you spend 3 hours working on something, but you are forcing every step of it.  You’re working at maybe 35% efficiency and it keeps getting lower as you plow through.  But what if you worked at 35% efficiency for half an hour and then said, “Forget this, I’m gonna go take a bath.”  You soak in the tub for half an hour and then you come back to your work, rested and with a positive outlook.  Now you’re working at 80% efficiency.  And yes, you took half an hour off, but that only lowered your overall efficiency to, like, 62%. No, that’s not 100%. That’s not even 80%, but it’s a lot better than 35%. 

Procrastination can tell you if you are prioritizing your work correctly and help you work more efficiently. Sometimes we put things off because we tell ourselves that they are not that important. And here’s the thing: sometimes that’s true. And that’s good to know. We push to the foreground those things that have deadlines or where someone else is involved and waiting on us. Because cleaning the kitchen can be done after that assignment that is due in the morning.  

 

 

 
Of course, it’s only procrastination if things get done in the end. If things aren’t getting done, that’s not procrastination; that’s not getting things done. Which is a whole different topic which we will cover in another post. When I get around to it. Procrastination can be overused and that makes your life more difficult. But let’s not say all procrastination is bad. Because it isn’t.  Before trying to force your way through the procrastination, see if that procrastination isn’t trying to tell you something. Maybe it’s time for a rest or time to change subjects for a while or time to just sit and think. Listening to your procrastination can help you to work smarter.