sort of emphasizing to her that you must get a certain score or we can't pay for your college; that really may freak her out.
That very DEFINITELY isn't coming from us.
We've, in fact, pointed out that the actual $$ associated witha National Merit scholarship is quite minimal. It's a nice honor, but little more.
(Of course, at a couple of private schools, merit scholarships LOCALLY as a result add up to some major cash... but we've not discussed that with her. At all. Haven't even discussed it in the house while she's home.)
She's an odd duckling when it comes to stress. Truly-- she's sort of an adrenaline junkie.
Best she's ever done on a standardized test was the full battery that she took when:
a) she'd been spending the preceding three weeks at HOSPICE nearly round the clock with a dying grandparent,
b) taking back-to-back-to-back high stakes testing
c) with the car packed for a dash back up the interstate for another 600 mile road trip to that grandparent's funeral service.
It's like the stress has to reach some failsafe/fuse threshold and beyond that, she's good to go because it has reached such a cacophany that it drowns out the voice of doubt or negative self-talk or something.
I can't really explain it. But I've seen her do it. She SHINES when she's under a lot of pressure. So part of her self-handicapping probably falls under the category of "optimizing" with that particular quirk in mind.
At the moment-- I'm having her run through yet another practice set (just the two math sections) with no calculator. She wasn't happy about this, but if the only way for her to see that she can, too do those problems is to slow her down and force her to write things out and think things out... so be it.
Not sitting the exam isn't really an option at this point given the arrangements that had to be made for her to test at the registered test site. It would be very very bad to back out when they've had to get an additional proctor and she's not even an enrolled student there. KWIM? I also fear the idea of such standardized tests taking on an even more fearsome aspect if we send her a message that this IS such a big deal that she's correct to be that afraid, if that makes sense. She doesn't have anything to fear, really. No way am I going to legitimize test anxiety. Desensitizing, sure. Teaching some coping skills, absolutely. But legitimizing, no.
Thanks again for the ideas. Lots of things to think about.
