- Hey!
You have a hard time studying and preparing for tests?
I've got something for you.
Watch this.
(car zooming)
Hey, what's up, this is Kantis Simmons,
academic success expert,
and leading authority on school improvement,
as well as the author of Playing Your A Game,
and today, in this video,
I want to talk to you about some of the frustrations
you may have with taking school tests
and standardized tests,
and I wanna share with you a little piece of advice
that I can suggest to you on how to prepare for those tests.
Now, over the last few weeks,
I've received a lot of, I mean,
absolutely a lot of emails,
people hitting me on Facebook and Twitter,
as well, even when I'm speaking at schools live,
people, students come to me,
educators, parents, asking me various questions
about the challenges and the frustrations
that they're having when preparing for tests
and studying for tests.
What I want to do real quickly here
is just go over some of these frustrations,
and maybe you're dealing with some of these frustrations,
and hopefully, you know, I can address
some of these frustrations for you.
Number one, I have a hard time studying
a few days before the exam.
Number two, I have a hard time preparing for the test.
Third one here is this,
when it's time to take a test,
I absolutely go blank.
I'm very anxious during the test,
I get very frustrated that I'm timed
while taking a test.
I run out of time when I take a test.
Simply, I don't know the answers to the test.
I don't know what to study for
or when to study.
I have the inability to excel on tests.
I do all that I can but I can never seem to get it right.
There's no real time to study in my personal life,
I have too many things going on.
There's so much pressure behind just taking one test.
And here's another one.
How do you deal with questions
that you've never seen before,
and that have never been covered in the class?
Now, like these many frustrations,
I've dealt with a lot of them.
I remember as a high school student,
it was time to take the SAT,
and all of the pressure that built up around that.
For me, that was a big time in my life,
because coming out of high school,
I was offered a full academic marching band scholarship,
with a great school called Florida A&M University
down in Florida,
and they offered me a full academic band scholarship,
and they told me, hey, Kantis, all you have to do
is just send us your SAT scores.
So, cool.
I took the SAT, sent them my scores.
But you know what happened?
After taking the SAT four times,
four times!
I still came up 40 points short
from the required SAT to receive that scholarship,
and you know what?
They took the scholarship back from me.
And no, I didn't go to Florida A&M University,
I ended up going to Norfolk State University.
Now why do I share that with you?
I share that with you because I too understand
all of the pressure, all of the frustrations
that come with taking a test.
I mean, if you think about it for a second.
You take tests in elementary, middle school,
you have standardized tests, you have graduation tests,
out of high school to go to college you take tests.
I remember coming out of college, I took the GRE
to go into grad school,
and when you're working on your master's degree,
or Ph.D, there's other tests,
there's opportunities where you have to
defend your dissertation,
and even when you go into corporate America,
there are tests given out.
So there are a lot of things
that can go through your mind,
a lot of things that you deal with
when taking tests,
and tests are really important,
and what i wanna share here real quickly
is what I call the 50/50 principle.
Now regardless of what your frustration may be,
and even if I didn't name one of your frustrations,
I would love to hear some of the frustrations
or challenges that you're dealing with,
but I wanna share with you
something that has really helped me
over my academic career in school.
It's something I call the 50/50 principle.
Now you may have seen this before,
you may have heard this before,
but this is what I call the 50/50 principle.
So let's say you're taking a test
in a certain class, right?
And everybody knows that when you're in class,
you spend more than 70% of the time in class
listening to the lecturer,
listening to your teacher or professor.
And the 50/50 principle works like this.
I want you to take your notebook,
and I want you to draw a line down the middle
of your note paper.
And then on the left hand side of the paper,
I want you to take all of your classroom notes
on the left side of the paper.
All the most important details,
the key things that the teacher
is talking about in the classroom,
those most important concepts
that your professor's lecturing about?
Write those, take all your classroom notes
on the left hand side.
You got that?
Only on the left hand side.
Now you do that, as you go through page by page.
Only on the left hand side.
And then, when you get home,
or when you go to study for this certain class,
what I want you to do is this.
On the right hand side of the paper,
as you're studying the notes on the left hand side,
I want you to write out potential test questions
that may go along with the study notes
on the left hand side.
So if there's a great concept,
let's say it's a math problem,
that, a principle, on the left hand side,
on the right hand side,
you come up with your very own test questions.
Hey, what would be a good test question
to go along with this study note?
What would be something that you think your teacher
would ask about this concept?
And then you do that all the way down.
On the left side of the piece of paper,
you take your classroom notes,
on the right hand side of the paper,
you make up your own study notes.
You know, here's the thing about it.
So many times, we talk about preparing for tests,
and one of the ways to get better
at performing on tests
is practicing taking tests,
and that's why this 50/50 principle's very well,
very good, because as you take the notes
on the left hand side,
you're preparing for the test on the right hand side,
and what's this gonna do?
It's gonna help you retain more,
it's gonna help you get over some of that anxiety,
cause you're gonna be highly prepared.
Hey, that's all I have right now.
Hey, what I want you to do for me,
along with applying this 50/50 principle,
I want you to tell me,
just leave me a comment, let me know
if there are other frustrations and challenges
that you may be having with taking tests
or standardized tests is concerned.
I wanna answer them, I wanna help you.
All right?
My name is Kantis Simmons,
and remember this,
only one game in life counts.
And that's your A game.
Have a great day.