Perfect Score Project, Week #9: Positive Addiction

Is it possible to cultivate a positive addiction? And maybe more importantly, is it possible to grow one in your kids?

Catherine pointed out this story in the New York Times about a Type A teenager named Omika Jikaria who goes to Stuyvesant High School and does 3-4 hours of homework a night. 

Wow.  How do I make me one of those?  My son has been somewhat compliant with this SAT project…..but there’s NO WAY he’d initiate hours of work on his own.

My daughter’s just gotten home from her summer activities, so I’m trying to rope her in too ;)  The SATs really do have a bad rap.  Without even knowing what she was resisting, she vehemently protested. I think the SATs need to be re-branded as fun, (for starters).  

In an act of filial responsibility, she agreed to TEST ME on the Vocab Words. (“Filial,” btw, is a one of my SAT vocab words.  Feel free to chime in if I’m using it incorrectly.)  

Here are my SAT insights for the week:

• I’ve discovered that if I associate the Vocab Word with a person, I can remember it forever.  Perspicacious…….dad; Temporize……school administrator who shall remain nameless;  Jingoism……Sarah Palin;  Tractable……my son.  Etc. etc. etc.

• Numerous really smart people said that I should just start working my way through the College Board Blue Book, one problem at a time.  So that what I’ve started doing. They actually feel different (as in more difficult) than the sample problems in all of the other books.

• I wrote about the Khan Academy a few weeks ago — and I still think it’s AMAZING — HOWEVER, now that I’ve had real life experience trying to use it, I will clarify some of the shortcomings:

A) It’s very hard to navigate and find exactly what you’re looking for.

B) The exercises don’t line up with the videos, which makes for a lot of wasted time trying to find practice problems for the video you’ve just watched.

C) If you are following along for help solving SAT problems, be sure the book you have is the same one he has.  Mine is a newer edition, so the tests don’t line up perfectly.  I was able to figure it out, but again, lots of extra time spent navigating.

D)  Here’s the MOST IMPORTANT POINT:  As amazing a resource as this is, I don’t think online teaching could ever replace real world teaching because you can’t ask questions! So, for instance, I was stuck on a math problem in the SAT Blue Book ……found the video on Khan Academy, but he lost me in the very first sentence (he said “start with “0”….or some such) and I didn’t understand why start with “0” —  so I never got the clarification I was looking for.

That said, I still love Khan (as in, the concept, his voice, the soothing black board…..LOVE).

Still having fun.  Finding it really hard to carve out regular space in my life to make the kind of progress I’d like to.  Definitely making headway none the less.