Matt Bardin - Zen in the Art of the SAT. How to Think, Focus, and Achieve Your Highest Score

G RAPHIA
AN IMPRINT OF HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON 2005

Copyright 2005 by Matt Bard in and Susan Fine

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Graphia, an imprint of
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, Massachusetts.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions,
Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

The text of this book is set in 9.5-point Palatino.

SAT is the registered trademark of the College Board, which has not endorsed this publication.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bardin, Matt.
Zen in the art of the SAT : how to think, focus, and achieve your highest score /
written by Matt Bardin and Susan Fine,
p. cm.
ISBN 0-618-57488-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Scholastic Assessment TestStudy guides. I. Fine, Susan. II. Title.
LB2353.57.B36 2005 378.1'662dc22 2005004326

ISBN -13: 978-0618-57488-9

Book design by Hanley | Jones Art + Design

Manufactured in the United States of America
QUM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To all the students who have been
willing to skip and come back

Introduction

IThe Nature of the Test

1 In a Foreign Land

2 Walk Through the Open Door

The New SAT at a Glance

IIThinking

3 The Key to Better Thinking: Skip and Come Back

4 When to Skip and When to Come Back

5 Beginner's Mind: How to Come Back

6 Reasons Not to Skip and Come Back (and Why They're Wrong)

7 An Example: Erica Works the Test

8 From "I Can't" to "I Can"

IIIAnxiety

9 The Buddha and the SAT

10 Anxiety and the Present Moment

11 Breathing

12 Basic Meditation: Managing Anxiety

13 Assessing Your Anxiety

14 Anxiety Examples

IVReading

15 Reading Challenges

16 Reading Habits That Get in the Way and How to Correct Them

17 Reading Assessment

18 How to Raise Your Reading Level

19 Critical Reading Strategies

VSome Things You Must Know

20 The Big Ten: Grammar and Usage

21 Math Strategies

22 Math Basics

23 Math Quiz

24 The Basics of Timed Writing

VIParents

25 Taking Your Parents Down Memory Lane

26 Seven Damaging Remarks Well-Meaning Parents Make

27 The Five Characteristics of Supportive Parents

VIIYour Plan

28 Organization: How's Your Brain's CEO?

29 Just Twenty-five Minutes

30 You Can Run a Marathon: Creating an SAT Study Plan

Getting-Started Checklist

VIIILife Lessons

31A Crisis Is a Critical Opportunity

32 Feelings Are First, but the Mind Leads

33 Beginner's Mind (Reprise)

34 The Myth of Genius (and Stupidity)

Appendices

Recommended Reading List

Vocabulary

About the Authors

There is only one time when it is essential to awaken. That time is now.

Buddha

If you've heard the term Zen before, it might have been used in a sentence like "You just have to be Zen about it," which was offered as advice for getting through some unpleasant experience such as sitting at the kids' table at Thanksgiving. The implication is that Zen refers to an ability to endure through anything without much feelinga way to zone out or just be mellow about everything. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Zen evolved over the last thousand years in Asia as a way to purify one's life through meditation. More recently, people around the world have taken a strong interest in Zen. Many Americans, in particular, have found that the insights and practices of Japanese monks are effective antidotes to our stressed-out way of life.

Zen practice focuses on opening your mind to the present. Take a moment right now to hear all the sounds around youtraffic noise, birds, the hum of a refrigerator. Listening is a way to bring your attention into the present. Your mind rarely notices what you're hearing. Most of us dwell instead on thoughts that have nothing to do with the present. What will she think about what I'm wearing? How will I ever get all my work done tonight? Why did my history teacher give me that grade? How can I get my parents to let me use the car?

Zen teaches us that the thoughts that preoccupy us are not reality. As they clank around in our heads, reality goes on all around us. The goal of Zen practice is not so much to eliminate these thoughts as to become aware of their existence in our lives and to begin gently nudging them aside in order to give the present moment a larger place in our experience. When we let thoughts and worries about the past and future fall away, we become more aware of our existence in the moment, and we can concentrate on what's right in front of us. We also become aware of ourselves as part of a unity that is the universe.

Reading this book will not teach you to become one with the universe (though you may feel inspired to move in that direction on your own). The focus here is on a less global aspect of Zen practice known as samadhi, which means "being one with an object." In this case, the "object" we're talking about is a test: the SAT.

Samadhi is the state of mind that allows athletes and musicians to perform extraordinary feats. It allows lawyers to draft elegant contracts and artists to paint or draw or sculpt. Samadhi refers to a person's ability to bring total focus to a task through concentration. It is exactly the quality that the SAT demands.

How do you feel when you're taking a test and get a question about something you don't know? Your heart rate goes up. You might feel heat in your chest or your temples. If only you had read that chapter more carefully or memorized that formulabut now it seems there's little you can do. You make up some feeble nonsense in hopes of getting partial credit. Whether this happens to you all the time or almost never, it's one of the worst feelings you can experience as a student.

It's also something that you can count on experiencing while taking the SAT. However, on the SAT, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It may even be a good thing.

In Japanese, the word for crisis (kiki) also means "critical opportunity." That's because every crisis can be a turning point. How you handle a crisis can make the difference between disaster and triumph.

At some point on the SAT, you may face a crisisthe anxiety caused by a question you initially think you can't answer. How you handle this crisis will determine how well you do. (And how you manage anxiety more generally will determine how well you do in lots of different things throughout life.) This book discusses the critical skills you need to do well on the SAT: reading, thinking, and managing anxiety. Reading and thinking are closely related on the test because many SAT questions can't be easily understood. Your brain has to break them down the way your stomach breaks down a pizza with too many toppings. From quirky math questions to complicated reading passages and the twenty-five-minute timed writing exercise, the challenges on the SAT can initially seem tricky if not impossible. Yet the guidance and suggestions offered here will teach you how to handle the test.