Practice Integrity

There is a difference between doing a job and getting a job done.

There is a difference between doing a job and getting a job done.

I think of myself “cleaning” the kitchen table as a kid: I took every item off the table. I applied a wet sponge to the surface. I cleaned the table!

But actually…those cereal boxes just got moved to the closest available surface, the crumbs got swept to the floor, and the really sticky parts didn’t get touched (because I made no effort to remove them). The job was to improve the state of the kitchen by cleaning the table, and I failed to do that. So I did the job, but I didn’t get the job done.

In a way, it’s a matter of integrity. I don’t mean ‘dishonest’ or ‘immoral’, although I probably was lying to myself (thinking I completed a job when I didn’t). I’m really thinking of another definition of integrity: the state of being whole or undivided. Did I complete every part of the job, or did I just run through a series of actions commonly associated with that job?

In a recent post, I created an 8-week study plan for the SAT. But it’s not enough to run through the assignments. What are you really trying to do?

1) Find the most common question types.

2) Learn as many of these types as you can, prioritizing the easy ones.

3) Maintain all of these question types through regular practice.

4) Assess your progress by taking practice tests that are as realistic as possible.

You can answer lots of questions and take lots of tests, but you may not be getting the job done. To help students see this clearly, I like to ask this question: “Let’s say I was going to give you $10 million if you got [x percent] correct. Would you have done anything differently this week?”

Sometimes, rarely, the student can honestly say that she would not have done anything differently. And this is the case for me when I take a practice test: I could not possibly want to get the answers right any more than I already do. Every mistake feels like dropping my grandmother’s crystal vase. So I do absolutely everything to get every question right.

But most of the time, students respond with a gleam in their eyes and a little smile. It turns out that there are many things they’d do differently if the stakes were higher. Some are during the test itself (like showing your work on math, and thinking of your own answers on reading). Mike Bergin has created a great checklist centered around good test-taking practices.

But many important actions occur before and after the test. Here are just a few:

• Trying to figure out the ones they missed after grading a practice test.

• Systematically reviewing previously-missed questions.

• Keeping track of concepts that have bothered them multiple times so that they can ask for help.

In short, if students thought they had a chance to earn $10 million, they would actively look for errors of all kinds throughout the process, devise solutions for these errors, test those solutions in a “real-test” environment, and keep repeating the process until they can’t imagine anything else they could do to improve their performance.

Engineers sometimes talk about “structural integrity.” A freshly-painted house might look nice, but if the wood is rotten and the beams are connected at weird angles, the structure will collapse under pressure. When you prepare for a test like the SAT, you are literally “making sense.” You are creating a highly sophisticated structure, a mental model that includes not only problem types and potential solutions to them, but their relationships to each other as well. If you build it with care and integrity, it will withstand the pressure of a real test.