WaltGrace83 wrote:I have a situation that I am sure people have had before but I have just started really drilling (working on level 1-2 Necessary Assumption now) and, although I am getting all the questions right, I have noticed that when I am actually drilling under timed conditions I have a good idea of what the answer will be but others still look "good" and I get worried when I get vague or confusing language that seems like it could be a tricky answer. This causes me to panic although when I blind review I very clearly see that "this answer was crap and I cannot believe I even thought about it." Although I am still getting the questions right I don't want to be put into a situation where I am panicky during the real test I take in June 2014. What do you guys think?
A few pieces of advice:
1) This is normal, so don't worry too much about it. Every student goes through this.
2) Have a process you always go through. This tends to alleviate panic because, instead of sitting there freaking out, you know what the next step is. For instance, for Necessary Assumption questions, my process is:
a) Find the conclusion
b) Outline the relevant premises
c) Find the flaw in the argument
d) Find the answer choices that have an impact on that flaw
e) Negate the answer choices to find which one, when negated, kills the argument.
If I know what I'm doing next, it makes it harder to panic.
3) If you have an answer choice that you like, but then another one looks good, only change your answer choice to the second one if you can both explain why the new answer is right AND why the old one is wrong. Your "gut" reaction should carry a bit of weight, and this way prevents you from changing an answer that you immediately thought was right but then talked yourself away from. You need to go past "this one is better" and get to "this one is right because _____, and the old one I thought was right is actually wrong because ______." If you can't do that, stick with your gut. Most of my students see improvement when they do this.