“Many a true word is said in jest.”—I don’t know, but I heard it from my mother.

Once upon a time in America, when I was a boy, my father, an engineer, said to me, “You can make numbers do anything you want them to do.”  This was the beginning of my cynicism.  But never mind that.  My father was fluent in four languages: English, German, French, and Algebra.  And his comment relied on the fact that most people can’t read Algebra.  Teaching GRE classes, I combat the fact that many people can’t read Algebra.  Because, like my father, the GRE exploits that weakness.  Thus, for many, preparing for the quantitative portion of the GRE is akin to studying a foreign language.  (Yes, I know that even many native speakers feel that preparing for the verbal portion of the GRE is also akin to studying a foreign language.  But that’s a different topic.)  In any case, you want to make your Algebra as fluent as your French. . .yes, for most of you, that was one of those jokes.

I know that some of you disagreed with the above and feel that the problem is an inability to understand math.  But that’s not true, at least on the level necessary to succeed on the GRE.  If you really didn’t have enough synapses, they wouldn’t let you out without a keeper—because you couldn’t tip, or comparison shop, or count your change.  It’s a literacy problem.  Think of our GRE math units.  Truthfully, the algebra unit is often a death march.  By the end, as country folk say, I often feel like I’m whipping dead horses.  On the other hand, the word problem unit concerning probability and combinations, putatively* a more advanced topic, usually goes really well.  Why?  Because folks can read the words and understand their meaning.  Conversely, folks just stare at the algebraic symbols as if they were hieroglyphics.  The problem is that putting a Rosetta Stone in the book bag would make it weigh too much. . .kidding.  But if you can’t read the hieroglyphics, the mummy will get you—just like in the movies.

It really is a literacy issue and should be approached in that fashion.  You still don’t believe me?  You want specific examples?  I got examples, a pro and a con.  On the affirmative side, I once worked one on one with a man who came to me because his math was in shreds.  Because he couldn’t read what the symbols were saying.  Partly because his mother had once said, “Your sister is the one that’s good at math.”  As far as the GRE is concerned, she was wrong, and so was your mother, if she said that.  Anyway, one day I gave him a high level word problem concerning average daily balances on a credit card.  He looked at it for about 30 seconds, and he didn’t write anything on his scrap paper.  Then he turned to me and said the answer was blah blah.  And he was right.  I looked at him and said, “How did you do that?  You’re not that good.”  (Yes, this is also an example of how mean I am to private students.)  But—and here’s the real punch line—he said, “It was about debt; I understood what the words meant.”  And there you go.

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“Many a true word is said in jest.”—I don’t know, but I heard it from my mother.

“I’ve never seen any of these words before, but I bet they all mean, ‘You’re a loser’.”

“Why is this question here? Why am I here?  When’s the civil service exam?  Garbage men still have a union. . .”

Have you lived that movie?  Paranoia is only human—and the old saying is true: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”  Paranoia is a primal reaction, developed to help protect humans from animals with sharp, pointy teeth.  Unfortunately, it is not helpful when one is facing questions with sharp, pointy teeth.  Even though the GRE is out to get you.  Failing to control your paranoia is a hidden reason for underperforming on the actual exam.

On this blog, I and others have discussed many factors crucial for success: foundation skills, strategies, timing, precision, and so forth.  And it’s like I say about L.A.—everything you ever read [here] about it is true.  However, after honing these skills, after achieving mastery, too many test takers succumb to their paranoia and thus revert when taking the actual exam, especially for the first time.  Even 99^th percentile skills will crumble if undermined by irrational panic and the results will not be gratifying.  (Have you ever watched the Chicago Cubs play a post season series?)   To succeed, folks must understand the difference between dispassionate, objective analysis—“I’ve never gotten a surface area question right in life, why do I think I’ll have a divine inspiration today?”—and irrelevant fear—“They’re going to tattoo a scarlet “L” on my forehead.”  Just as folks plan question and timing strategies, they must develop tools to banish their internally generated negative visualizations.

How do you tell the difference?  Objective analysis responds to the stimuli on the monitor.  Paranoia is a response to internal doubts.  (Notice how this is parallel to the nature of the exam—search for the answer on the screen, not in the opinions in your head.)  Sometimes, after you’ve read a question twice (everyone has a sinking feeling the first time), you hear yourself singing, “I’ve got the ‘I don’t know where I’m going but I’m going nowhere in a hurry’ blues.”  That’s the truth, not paranoia.  Bail out.  As one of my acting coaches used to say, “Only schizophrenics don’t react to the reality around them.”  Conversely, paranoia is when your thoughts of impending disaster revolve around your supposed shortcomings rather than the material on the screen.  As I’ve said before, if while taking the exam you find yourself thinking about how big a dumb ass you are, check the question—if it doesn’t read, “Which of the following best describes how big a dumb ass you are?”, you’re thinking about the wrong thing.  That is paranoia.  No kidding—you knew that.
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Many a true word is said in jest.—I don’t know, but I heard it from my mother.

I moved to Los Angeles, to a little bungalow in Laurel Canyon, the day before the Northridge earthquake.  Timing is everything, just like on the GRE.  I woke up around 3 in the morning.  Because the bungalow was jumping up and down.  As a stupid easterner, I thought, Oh, it’s an earthquake.  They have them here.  I didn’t know it was The Medium One.  (It was amazing to see the damage—piles of rubble on Ventura Boulevard and in Hollywood, and the I-10 ramp to the 405 fell down.)  As long as I was awake, I decided to go to the bathroom.  The first big aftershock threw me into the door frame.  It’s unsettling not to have a firm foundation under your feet.  You feel out of control and at the mercy of forces larger than you.

And that’s the way students feel about the GRE.  And for the same reason, metaphorically speaking.  In every GRE class I’ve taught, most of the students were bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by the shakiness of their foundation knowledge.  The ground was not firm beneath their feet.  It paralyzed them.  They understood the concepts of the problems and the relevant strategies to employ, but could not then solve the problems in a timely manner, if at all.  Especially on the quant side, the GRE tests a logic system—be precise, don’t assume, pick the choice that must follow.  The arithmetic and algebra are the moral equivalent of reading English.  You would like to be able to take those skills as much for granted as you do reading words.  When I say 7 times 13, you say 91.  Think of it as a rap.  When you see .625, you say 5/8.  Woot.  All seriousness aside, people waste 30 seconds a question in the quant because they don’t know their times tables or squares or the fractional decimal percentage equivalencies.  Or their algebra isn’t smooth and silky.  Think about how much time that uses up during the section.  How do you fix that?  How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice, practice, practice.  That’s a New York joke—LA classes hate it.  Having that mastery frees you to identify the type, the approach, and the traps—to do what has to be done to score well.

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