Samurai Flips Stress Weight In Your Favor On Standardized Tests
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CoolRocketTutor Says:
Take a tip from the ancient Samurai Warriors and use the force of tests to work for you, not against you. The Samurai learn to use the weight of opponents against the opponent—proving, from the past, the words of the cartoon character, later on: “We have met the enemy, and it is us!”
Have you ever had the feeling that you are sabotaging yourself? Sabotage is working undercover to subvert the plans that you appear to be making on the surface. For example, maybe you appear to be preparing to do well on tests (or maybe not); but are you your best audience or your worst enemy?
The difference makes all the difference in many more ways than taking a standardized test.
When you begin to view standardized tests as benchmarks for your personal use, you may find yourself enjoying some aspects to test-taking. How can this bizarre statement possibly be true?
If you do not believe anything else, there is one positive aspect to standardized tests. They are measured.
Now, I know you may be able to argue that even that aspect is negative because measurement pits one person against another or even makes an individual feel ‘less than’ or ‘better than’ another individual due to some measurement on a test.
We can have that argument sometime, if you wish. But, here, let me tell you that I have a great deal of experience with the peripheral aspects to test-taking; and the fact that the measurements are available to you can be useful. For one thing, you can focus in on your strengths and interests.
For some people, these results are the first indication from any source outside their own minds that they have abilities above the ‘norm’ in certain specific areas. For other people, the fact that this score that they can look at in relation to one test can vary, sometimes to a significant degree, after they do certain things to improve their skills, is life-changing. The comparison is educational.
I like to emphasize what I know to be true! You will improve your scores on standardized tests if you understand the ‘rules’ and the ‘reason’ for each individual test and plan your performance as exactly that: a performance. When you learn to use standardized tests for your personal benefit, you will especially appreciate the joy of performance.
Why will you like it? The main audience to please is you. This is under your control, and you will feel the joy when you perform well. Honestly, you know this, don’t you? Look at it a different way.
From the front of the room, as the teacher watching students perform, and from the back of the room, when I am the audience, watching students perform, let me tell you: Enjoying your opportunity to perform will not only improve your grades, it will improve your life. No matter what you think, the feeling is in you to enjoy performance. Find it and use it. This can be a key to joy in every part of your life.
Oh, no? Are you like me, perhaps? I absolutely hate standing up in front of a group and speaking. Yes, that’s right. I am a teacher. Part of the reason that I specialize in small group teaching and one on one teaching—and on-line teaching-- is that I am performing, and displaying what I can do and what the students can do, without being on stage in front of an audience. The students and I are extremely focused. For me, the variety and the variables of teaching are so intense that I perform at my very best with fewer pupils at a time. This is also the reason that you and I can perform well on standardized tests. Part of our brain is not considering the audience.
Some teachers are just the opposite, and the reason is that their teaching style relies upon a different type of performance. Some teachers can lecture a room full of people, literally thousands of people; and the teacher and the students are receiving benefits of that lecture. These teachers even use the power of the grand audience to enhance the effect of their performance.
Think about something that some other people really like to do that you do NOT like. For me, that’s any type of acting on the stage. Ugh!!!
I’m a teacher, and I want to give awards and to speak about motivational topics. But I will try to avoid being on stage even to dish out awards! How sad (and worrisome) is that?
Give me a quiet room in a library, even a smaller room within a library, around a smooth table and books and paper—and I am a happy person. What I try to do to relieve some stressful situations is to imagine a person I know who enjoys what I hate. You know you know somebody, right? Come on, you even know somebody who does not mind doing math or writing essays. (Okay, did I go too far?)
Here’s my point: Even actors who love being on stage will get stage fright. Many well-known actors get physically sick before going on stage to perform. But they like performing, and they get past the anxiety; and they do what they love: perform.
1. The more you learn about the test, the more you predict and manage the questions that will be on the tests;
2. the more you succeed in reading the directions and following strategies to work the problems, the better you will feel about what you know and what you need to know.
3. You will begin to feel a sense of confidence about standardized tests that has formerly been a part of your life only in relation to something you choose to do for enjoyment or for competition and enjoyment (like playing on a team, competing in individual sports, participating in debate, writing a poem, singing in a talent show, dancing in a contest, auditioning for a play.
Stress is a factor that can weigh in against you in test-taking situations. Have you ever thought about using the ancient Samurai warrior technique of flipping around that weight to work FOR you?
