READING COMPREHENSION: Where Settling is IN
Perhaps if he were a Reading Comp answer choice....
A couple of years ago, Lori Gottlieb’s MARRY HIM! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough (like the accompanying essay she’d written for the Atlantic several years before) ruffled feathers. Everyone I knew seemed to have a strong reaction to the idea, even if they didn’t actually read the book. Settle! Don’t settle! Maybe settle! Don’t settle now but settle later!
The concept of settling implies that you’re picking a person who isn’t your ideal. You’re willing to compromise because maybe you’re just too dang picky. (I recall telling one friend who’d just gotten engaged and was on the Gottlieb side of the debate that she might want to avoid the actual term “settling” around her fiance. Call me crazy.)
It’s a controversial concept.
It’s not, however, so controversial when it comes to reading comp. In fact, it’s a useful way of thinking about reading comp. At Manhattan LSAT, we teach that you should “work wrong to right”–eliminate wrong answer choices in order to get to the right one (as opposed to searching for the right answer). “Not you. Not you. Not you. Not you. Okay, you’re fine.” You’re the best of the bunch, (E), even though your breath is bad and you should really pluck your eyebrows, at least your left one.
Settle for right answers in Reading Comp. Don’t reach for your ideal. It’s already had an affair with Angelina Jolie and adopted a seventeenth kid.