Time is Always Against You
Posted by SIFE | No comments“Five minutes.” It is a cold Saturday morning and the fluorescent lights of the classroom beam down as you sit confined at a small desk. A man at the front of the room has just given you your last time warning. As the panic takes over, you lose focus on the current question. You tell yourself to relax and stop wasting time worrying. A few deep breaths and you regain concentration. Immersed back into the problem, you find yourself lost in a sea of numbers, forgetting where the answer is going. You scratch it out and start over. You do the math, but your answer does not match any of the five given. Discouraged, you decide to move on to the next one when you are interrupted. “Put your pencils down.”
Unfortunately, this is not a nightmare from a television dream sequence. Keeping track of time is crucial during standardized tests, but it’s a skill that many people struggle with. Although you may be able to complete every question correctly, you will still have time going against you. Instead of always worrying about obtaining the right answer, worry about how fast you can do them.
Take one of the math sections. You have 25 minutes to complete 20 questions. By dividing the time in the amount of questions, you have 1 minute and 25 seconds to complete each question. Though not all questions are the same. Some may take longer than the allotted time, right? Well along with questions that take longer, there are those that are less time intensive. If you go over time for one question, you better be sure to salvage some extra time from the next question to fit the time lost.
It is like a puzzle. Every question must fit into a time slot and if you carry over then you still have to make up for that exact amount on the next one.
Practice this at home. Time yourself on each question. Get comfortable with the pressure. Try doing this every day. Take 25 minutes and complete 20 individually timed questions. If you can get yourself up to speed, you will have a much better result. Remember, time stops for no one.
