Feel horrible = Did Well ...wait, what?

ENTJ

Have you ever got the feeling you did horribly after a problem set or PT and yet you somehow did really well? I've personally compared notes with a few other 7sagers and noticed the same results. Anyone else notice this? Any theories? I thought I would address this bizarre phenomena.

jpaslaqua

A *defense mechanism* is an act or technique that reduces the anxiety generated by threats of unacceptable or negative results.

jdawg113

^ thats deep

miriruchert

phenomenon....

marleybaby

just analyze your q's and techniques and be so sure of it. mark the q's that you're all like " i don't know if this is 100 percent right but its all I got" and then when you finish up and score it.... go back to those questions and try to map out the cold logic that got you there. Manhattan LSAT is good for that you can look up your LR questions right there. Finally... make a list of q's you felt insecure on/or bad on and watch JY's lessons and perhaps go through the lesson plan for that q type again. It's hard work but when you do it you realize it's all cake and cookies what you'll get... but you gotta buckle down and target your weaknesses and "chomp through the bad stuff first"

Do it!

marleybaby

practice and endurance my friend. It's the only way. But it's the RIGHT way.

jramo118

I have had the same thing happen to me. It is actually quite helpful on test day!! When you are under the most pressure and feel as if you are not doing well, you can think back to the times you took PTs and felt similar but ended up scoring well. Thats what happened to me, I learned to trust my instincts and that I was probably doing well despite that feeling.

ENTJ

@jramo118: Exactly! It's about intuition-building via the BR review. I think over time you develop a 6th sense about the test that goes against your normal logic. I believe that's where the uncertainty comes from. It's analogous to the distinction between normal physics and quantum physics--quantum physics isn't suppose to make sense on a common sense level because it behaves differently. At least that's the best representation I can think of.

kjessa

I found that when I started scoring better I felt worse about my answer choices. I think this happens because you actually know more about the test and so you know when you get things wrong/don't know something you KNOW that you don't know. Earlier in my studying I did not know why I was getting things wrong which meant I thought I was getting more things right! Hope that makes sense.

lsathopeful

I feel like I may have read about this on 7sage before, but @kjessa what you're talking about has a name:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias manifesting in two principal ways: unskilled individuals tend to suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate, while highly skilled individuals tend to rate their ability lower than is accurate.