Up Your Score (59 page)

Before we move on to the next chapter, you should know that guessing on a question is really no substitute for knowing the answer. Formally, we call this the Sponge Brain Rule, which says: “If you know the right answer, don’t guess a different answer.”

A man walks down the street
Says, “Why am I short of attention?
Got a short little span of attention
But, oh, my nights are so long.”
—Paul Simon

Your
concentration span
is the length of time that you can direct your attention to a given task without spacing out. Every task also has what is called a
distraction potential
. The higher the distraction potential of a given task, the more difficult it is for you to concentrate for long periods. We all know that the distraction potential of the SAT can be very high indeed. Not only is the test itself difficult and boring, but the test hall atmosphere, complete with creaking chairs, strange odors, ticking watches, squeaking pencils, sneezes, and shuffling papers, can be distracting.

Imagine the following scenario. It’s two hours into the test. You’re on the second math section, and you get to this question:

If
a
*
b
= 2
ab
and
, then what is the value of a * (b † c)?
(A) 4
ab
(B) 4
bc
(C) 2
abc
(D)
abc
(E)
ac

JaJa says: If you’re just not a morning person, try to trick your body on testing day. Go to sleep at an insanely early time on Friday (like at 7 P.M. or so, I’m not joking) and wake up a few hours before you take the SAT. Your body will think that it is two or three hours later than it really is. You‘ll feel like you are taking the SAT at 11:00 instead of at 8:30 (if only!), and chances are, more energized and ready to tackle the beast. Of course, that means that you’re going to collapse from exhaustion later in the day . . . but, oh well.

This is not too hard a problem to do when you’re fresh, but after two hours it can be tricky. If someone were to take a “brain transcript” of you trying to do this problem, here’s what it might look like:

“Okay, it’s one of those weird problems with the funny symbol thingies. Let’s see, what’s the deal? . . . Oh, I got it. You stick in the moochie for
b
†
c
, which makes
ab
/2, then . . . no, no, no, crap, it’s
bc
/2 that you plug in. Then that leaves
a
* (
bc
/2). How much more time do I have left? Twelve minutes. That’s
of the time for this section and I have more than
of the questions to do. Oh, no, I’m behind. Okay, okay, okay. Where was I? Oh yeah, you stick in 2
a
, which makes 2
abc
/2,
and then . . . I wish that idiot would stop tapping his foot. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. There he goes again. His hair is slimy. I wonder where he’s applying to college. Tap. Tap. Why doesn’t he wash his hair? Nasty! Okay, okay, okay. 2
abc
/2
=
abc
, which is answer (D). Good. Fill in (D).”

Well, you got the answer right, but only after much wasted thought. The worst mistake was checking the time. Do this only between problems, never in the middle of a problem. And never let the slightest distraction bother you—foot tapping, slimy hair, or whatever. Of course, this is much easier said than done. Simply deciding to concentrate can leave you with a brain transcript that looks like this:

“Concentrate. Concentrate, damn it. Okay. I’m just gonna focus my brain like you wouldn’t believe. This is the most important three hours of my life and I am going to concentrate intensely for the whole time. Ooooh, I’m really concentrating now. His slimy hair isn’t bothering me a bit. This is total concentration—no distractions. The tap tap tap noise that his foot is making right now, which I wish he would stop, isn’t bothering me either. You could stick me with pins and I wouldn’t feel it. Okay, what problem am I on? . . .”

You’re concentrating so hard on concentrating that you’re not concentrating on the test. The trick is to learn to concentrate without thinking about concentrating. Your mind should be effortlessly focused. To learn to do this you must practice. Training your brain is just like training any other part of your body—you have to exercise it.

Concentration exercises are usually pretty lame. They’re the kind of thing you read, then say to yourself, “That’s lame,” and move on without even trying them once. Typical concentration exercises are things like trying not to space out while running through the multiplication tables in your head. Any mental task that can be done for 20 consecutive minutes but is tedious enough that your brain is tempted to space out makes for a good concentration exercise.

We have discovered that drinking games make excellent concentration exercises. If you practice these games for
20 minutes a day for a month, you will find that your concentration span will improve dramatically. You will also be admired when you go to parties at college because you will be so good at these games.

Important note:
Usually these games are played in groups, and whenever someone screws up, that person has to take a drink. You, however, should play them alone and without doing the drinking. You will kill the whole value of the concentration game if you stop every few minutes to drink. You will also kill off so many brain cells after a month of these games that you will have no brain left with which to concentrate.

We’ve provided you with guidelines for two drinking games. We suggest that you play Game 1 for 10 minutes, then Game 2 for 10 minutes. It is good practice to try to do these games with the television on to see if you can concentrate so intensely that you are not even aware of the TV.

JaJa says: Practice makes perfect. Concentration is no exception. The earlier you hone your concentration abilities the better.

This one starts off simply but gets difficult. Say to yourself,
in a steady rhythm,
the following sequence of sentences.

1. One frog—two eyes—four legs—in a pond—kerplunk!

(Then multiply everything by two.)

2. Two frogs—four eyes—eight legs—in a pond—kerplunk! kerplunk!

(Then do it with three frogs.)

3. Three frogs—six eyes—12 legs—in a pond—kerplunk! kerplunk! kerplunk!

As you can see, the basic pattern is

X frogs—two X eyes—four X legs—in a pond—repeat “kerplunk” X times

Keep doing the sequence. Whenever you say something wrong (i.e., saying 12 legs when you should have said 16 legs or forgetting to say “in a pond” or not knowing how many times you have said “kerplunk” or forgetting which number is next)
or whenever you lose the mental rhythm and have to pause to think of what to say next, you have to divide the nearest even number of frogs that you are on by two and then start again. For example, if you were on 10 frogs and you said that they had 40 eyes, you would have to go back to “five frogs—10 eyes—20 legs—in a pond . . .”

This is a counting game. Pick a number between 2 and 10, not counting 2 and 10. Then start counting
in a steady rhythm
. Whenever you come to a number that

is a multiple of the number

or

has the number as one of its digits

you don’t say the number; instead you say, “Buzz.” The best way to explain this is to give an example.

Suppose the number is 4, then you count

1, 2, 3, buzz, 5, 6, 7, buzz, 9, 10, 11, buzz, 13, buzz, 15, buzz, 17, 18, 19 . . .

If you miss a “buzz” or lose the rhythm, you have to go back to the number that is half of the nearest even number that you screwed up on.

This game hasn’t gained widespread popularity in bars, but it is the most useful concentration game. If you take a lot of practice tests and really concentrate on each section for the entire half hour, you will concentrate better on the real test.