Score Dip, feeling unmotivated

leentarabichi

I just recently took a PT after two months of studying that gave me my initial diagnostic score when I started with 7 sage. I saw an almost 7 point difference in my last couple of PTs, but this one really demotivated me as it gave me the same score as my diagnostic. If anyone has experienced something like this plz let me know, feeling very discouraged at the moment and like all my hard work was for nothing

halemadsen23

Hey boss, don't worry as this is nothing too out-of-the-ordinary. After I took my diagnostic exam, it was a full month of practice or more before I even beat that original score. The reason is that I was constantly stressing during my early exams and felt an expectation to improve every week, which wasn't conducive to dispassionate and relaxed cognition. For me, I just practiced untimed to build up confidence.

Remember that bad days certainly happen, and from an outside perspective, it doesn't seem like something worth worrying about. The only harm this can cause is what you allow it to. In fact, use it as an opportunity to learn about yourself. I would venture to say you might be falling into a similar trap as myself and others with worrying excessively about the need to perform when what we often need is just to take a step back and focus on the process more than the score.

tero230

each test is different, you might have just taken a test that was more focused on your weak question type(s), take a look at ur diagnostics and also compare both tests to see what the difference was. You definitely will have improved after 2 months, i promise.

L up North

Don't let it get you down! Progress isn't linear- you are just trying to get the proportion of PTs where you're happy with your score to be more over time than the proportion of scores you aren't as happy with. Eventually it'll be every once in a while you get a PT that isn't great, but 7 pts after a couple months is definitely within the margin of error- I'm (finally) scoring consistently at my goal score after several months, but a 7 point swing once in a while isn't crazy for me either- it just means that particular test pinpointed more of my weak points or I was having an off day. Totally normal. Just remind yourself that there is no reason to think that this "off" score is more representative of what you've learned than all of your other good scores! If you feel inclined, you can enter the problems you got wrong in a wrong answer journal so you can recognize trends in why you're getting particular questions wrong, so anytime you get something wrong, it's not a "Uh oh, I got this wrong" feeling, it becomes a "great, more data so I can fix this" feeling. Hang in there- it sounds like you've made great progress already, so don't let a bum score steal that motivation from you!