Stress Test

I had the wherewithal to take this screen shot from my phone when I woke up in the middle of the night last night.

The significance is that that was far earlier than I intended to wake up, and far earlier than I did get up, having been up late working — working, in particular, on review materials for students taking the GRE & LSAT this weekend.

[Author’s Note: This is adapted, with permission, from an email sent to an actual student. As opposed to some other form of non-actual student. But I digress.]

This picture is drastically less inspiring when viewed upon abruptly waking up covered in sweat from a bad dream.

The reason I woke up was because I was awakened not by a nightmare, per se, but certainly a “stress dream,” a bad dream full of anxiety and stress.

The dream was about math. Specifically, GRE style math such as I had been going over with a student — one diligent student in particular. It was on my yellow note pad and it was full of equations that couldn’t quite be simplified, not because they were difficult, but because there were moving scribbles all over them, like some sort of equation version of Pig Pen from Peanuts.

I do love dreams with obvious symbolism! :)

Sometimes, I feel like I want to meet one of the characters who write these tests. Other times, I am not so certain.

The point I want to convey with this is that the test is designed to impart anxiety. The demonstration of this principle — the evidence here — is that it does it even to me. And I have no problems with the math on it at all. Moreover, I’m not even taking the test!

And yet the process itself is anxiety inducing.

But the real lesson here is that that means that the anxiety you feel — that all the test takers feel — is irrelevant.

A person feels anxiety and tries to figure out what it means. That is good. Just like pain can be good — it’s important information your body is feeding your brain based on existing stimuli, generally concerning things you need to know about.

But pain can be harrowing, demoralizing, and in other ways destructive, too. It is important, then — critical even — to discern between pain that offers useful information about injury or a worsening condition and pain which is just sometimes generally present and offers no new useable information; once such distinctions and assessments are made, we can treat each accordingly.

So when a person experiences anxiety, it’s identified as information that requires interpretation.

And this is the greatest trick of the test, and its most pernicious. Because in this situation, the process itself, even if conducted well and even successfully, is anxiety inducing. It’s just part of the process. So it is irrelevant.

That’s weird. And it’s hard.

See, people think it is relevant. They think it is relevant because anxiety usually signals something you need to do something about — if you feel anxiety, there must be some reason, yes?

In this case, though, the anxiety is simply a function of the fact of the test itself. It sits and festers and grows precisely because we keep spending time on the test, working on the test, thinking about the test.

Outside of the context of the test, this would be considered very unhealthy behavior. In the context of the test, we call it pursuing professional goals.

Whether or not that makes it any more or less healthy I leave to you.

But the point is: If you’ve decided to take the test, then so be it. The anxiety is just a function of that decision. It would be here no matter what–even expert test takers feel it, just in different “flavors” (“Oh God, what if I mess it up and my students find out??”)

So it makes sense to think about how the anxiety is linked to some problem, some deficiency, some shortcoming on your part that will inhibit your ability to excel.

But I’m telling you, it’s not so. It just feels that way. In reality, it’s just there.

So ignore it.

I mean, obviously, you will be aware of it. You might even hate it, as we so often do with anxiety — but that’s the energy of the anxiety itself. In reality, it’s just a nuisance, pretending to something that it is not. It’s a puppy thinking it’s pulling something over on you by hiding her biscuits in your stuff or stealing your food in plain sight.

Indeed, these things can be quite annoying. But how worthwhile is it to spend your time on being angry with a puppy?

And yes, I am fully aware that that is something that real people actually, like, do.

You can do this. And one way or another, you’re going to. We know this, right?

I believe, anyway.

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Epilogue:

Spoiler alert for people who haven’t seen or read Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: