proof

plus this unpublished press release from 2013 about me

What none of this says, though, is:

-I had a 3.0GPA in high school (and then in college)

-I did 0 prep (except when our English teacher made us run through some ACT vocab, like, twice)

-I had a C in Pre Calc that year

-I was severely depressed at that time in my life - would spend afternoons sitting with my legs hanging off the side of my 8 story building, contemplating suicide

-This score did nothing to cure that depression.

It did, however, open my eyes to how utterly fucked our educational system is.

I watched so many other kids, who deserved it way more than I did, struggle to the point of hysterics. I became the target of so much jealous rage from kids who had 4.0s, put in hundreds of hours of volunteer work, and were the stars of the track, soccer & basketball teams. Here I was, some lazy, depressed introvert, all of a sudden right in the middle of everyone's attention & gossip. It was wrong, and everyone knew it, including me.

But I understood how it happened immediately. And I tried to explain it to anyone who would listen, but as it turns out, nobody really cares. All they cared about was creating a version of me in their minds that wasn't real. They thought I was some kind of secret genius, or really good at fraud.

The truth is, the exams are engineered purely around anxiety. The more you care about getting a good score, the more you'll worry & the worse you'll do.

That's it. Period.

It's like this:

I'll ask you, "what's two plus two?" and you'll say "four". Easy.

But if I put a gun to your head, set a timer for 10 seconds and ask you to "select for the value of the sum of 2 and 200% of 1 from the following set of calculations: 100% of 2, 150% of 2, 300% of 2, 300% of 1 and 400% of 1,"--all of a sudden, your chances of making a mistake go way up.

(the "gun" in this metaphor is the implied threat of poverty and death should you fail to get a good score. aka the basis of our entire school system. nbd)

(also, yes, that was a real question on the ACT, from June 2018 I believe. I use a resource that has several years' worth of questionably-legally-obtained genuine ACT tests. I've had some students discover the actual tests they took during our sessions.)

If I could snap my fingers and help everyone understand the test the way I do, I would.

So, help me help you any way I can.

tl;dr this test is purely and 100% about your anxiety. I know because I've had more success with my own students by coaching anxiety than by teaching them content (because, spoiler alert, no one learns anything new from the content).

What else could it ever have been about?

This subject has been on my mind a lot lately - you can find more about it on my blog, if you're interested!

AMA!