X was a student that was having a ton of trouble in math. I worked with him regularly for a significant period of time and helped him adjust the way he prepared for tests. After some time, we reached a point where I felt that he knew the material well. I was excited to hear about his performance on an upcoming test. He tanked. He didn’t just under perform, he failed. I was dumbfounded, and even a little embarrassed; I had told his mom that he was ready, and that I was confident he would do well. So, what happened?

I wasn’t willing to accept that X’s situation was unsolvable. Instead, I saw an opportunity for collecting more data and drawing a more complete picture of the situation that we wanted to change. So, X and I sat down and talked casually about the test. Rather than asking a slew of questions about the test (that usually wind up being biased towards my conscious or subconscious hypothesis) straight away, we just talked about how that whole day went. At first, I got the same answers that all students give (i.e. “fine”, “I don’t know”, “Not good, obviously”). To move past these standard responses, I employed a myriad of questions:

• How are the ladies treating you?
• Did you have a late night the night before?
• What did you eat for breakfast? Wait, let me guess: pop tarts. No? How about an energy drink?
• Were you late for school that day? Why?
  
• Did you eat a snack before? Can that snack be found in the food pyramid? Would it be found in the thin and yellow "crap spectrum"? (note for old people: this refers to the "crap box" at the apex of the old pyramid)
  
• What class did you have before? Does that class suck? How?
• What period was it? How's that teacher?

Once we had a good conversation going, I steered it towards specific details of his test experience.

• Did you have something to write with?
• Were you sitting next to your friend? Or a really cute girl?
• What was the first thing you did when you looked at the test?
• What was the second?
• What was the hardest problem? What made it so difficult? Did you recognize the material or were you like "WTF? Why is my mom paying a tutor?"
  
• What should we do differently for the next test?

In addition to his verbal responses, I paid attention to his reactions. His attitude regarding various elements of his day, which of my questions seemed stupid to him, what he thought about the test in general---all of these gut reactions helped to sharpen my brief look into X's mind during the test. I tried to just absorb it all. Through listening to him talk, I learned two very important things:

• Some of the things we had studied were not coming to him easily during a testing scenario
• When initially confused by or uncertain of a problem, X followed a specific pattern that seemed to obstruct him from putting forth his best effort. Basically, he was letting the hard problems psych him out.

X’s situation exemplifies two problems that I have often witnessed firsthand as a tutor. The first issue--not remembering something when you need it and how you need it--is something that HSI is passionate about. Our content (see Ned and TED's site or myspace page for a recent example) prioritizes the stickiness of valuable information. I look forward to discussing that topic at length, but must postpone it for a future blog article. Here, I want to focus on the second problem that X faced.

X had been unsuccessful in math for a long time, and he had developed habits for coping with the frustration of failing on tests. Because it sucks to try hard and then fail repeatedly, he stopped trying. His destructive pattern went something like this:

• X would be taking a test
• He would identify a problem that fit the pattern of something that he couldn’t remember how to do
• Certain that he sucked at math and couldn't solve a confusing problem, X would make a meager attempt to put in some answer with no shot of being correct
• He would get it wrong
• Because he hadn’t tried, he sidestepped any attachments to the negative outcome
• He reinforced his belief that he sucked at math

This is a destructive pattern of thought. Our book, On Insight, outlines the effects of destructive
thought patterns in an academic setting: It distracts your preparation, harms your focus, and stimulates unhealthy stress. In X’s case, his thought pattern was preventing him from using what he actually knew. The confusion/uncertainty created by the test scenario was a trigger for the pattern of not really trying.

X's thought pattern trumped all the improvements we had made to his preparation process. Despite a stronger grasp of the curriculum, he was still struggling with problems that initially made him confused or uncertain. In this context, I saw little benefit in trying to instill more math knowledge into his brain because his ingrained habits abandoned that knowledge when it was most useful. Instead of tweaking the amount of knowledge that he had, we needed to improve how that knowledge was accessed. What we needed was a new thought pattern, one that triggered a more productive reaction than giving up.