Self-paced
Hi everyone,
I wanted to send this out into the void in case others are in a similar boat. A consistent issue (?) I've been having is making the occasional, but still annoyingly frequent, silly mistake. Most often, I've identified my mistake is not "zooming out" on an easy question and seeing that the answer is so incredibly obvious, and instead getting lost in the sauce of critical thinking. Also, I'll occasionally identify the wrong conclusion in a stimulus and then realize during review that I was incorrect, but it was just a goof rather than fundamental misunderstanding.
I'm a high scorer and would like to focus my energy on the handful of questions I find actually hard, rather than keep getting disappointed by my silly mistakes/overthinking. Does anyone have any tips or drill recs to help me from overthinking questions and getting them wrong?
Thanks!
8
3 comments
Hello! It happens to a lot of test-takers, so you are definitely not alone! I have absolutely been in the position of missing a question that everybody else got right simply because I was overthinking it. To address your desire to focus on difficult questions, you can certainly build custom drills using only Level 4 and 5 difficulty questions to hone your high-level skills.
With that being said, if you continue to make silly mistakes or overthink, it is a habit that you actively need to break. At the end of the day, the objective difficulty level of a question does not matter; all that matters is whether you get it right or wrong. Missing an easy question costs you the exact same number of points as missing an extremely hard one.
Speaking of that, something that might be helpful is actually doing the opposite: create drills consisting only of Level 1 and 2 questions. Go into these drills fully aware that the questions are easy, and actively practice trusting your gut and not overthinking. Your goal is to increase your accuracy on these easy questions to 100% by training yourself to take the text at face value.
I hope this helps, and best of luck!
@SerinJ I agree with your recommendation for doing drills of solely level 1/2 questions. I often do them for a similar purpose, while also having the drills include ~30+ questions in order to work on stamina at the same time.
@SerinJ @JTF2005 Thank you both so much! I've pretty much only been drilling 4+ difficulty questions, then find myself frozen when practicing a section on what ends up being a 1 / 2 level question. TYSM for the affirmation and practical advice! 🙏