I never took it, but here’s a guy who retook it at age 35. The analytic geometry question was easy for me, but I didn’t take the time to try to figure out the covered polygon. I assume I’d probably do pretty well on it, even now.
How did I get two degrees from Ann Arbor without taking the SAT? By spending the first two years at community college.
And boy, can I identify with this:
Because I work on a computer like normal human beings, I’d forgotten how painful it can be to write in longhand for long stretches of time. I know it’s not as bad as digging trenches in the Amazon, but still—it’s AGONY. Your neck gets sore from staring down. You get that weird dent in your middle finger and thumb from pressing the pencil too hard. Everything around you starts to smell like old pencil shavings. This is why I fucking hated blue-book exams in high school and college. It wasn’t that I had to study, or that I had to think on the fly. It was the hard LABOR of it all. Every time I finished a blue-book exam in school, I felt as if I had just moved a cord of firewood. Many times, I would hurry up and try and finish the essay early, just so that I could stop writing and rest. It’s amazing, when you think about it. You spend a whole semester studying for some test, and then you rush it because you just want five extra minutes to relax. That’s how my brain works. It’s not a perfect organ.
I am so fortunate that computers came along when they did. My writing volume would be a tiny fraction of what it is if I had to write long hand.
“My writing volume would be a tiny fraction of what it is if I had to write long hand.”
And we most likely would not be reading it
I learned to type in jr. high. Later the engineering boss I had couldn’t quite understand how I could use a keyboard (he couldn’t.) It actually amazed him and he would stare.
My handwriting is illegible. Diabetes is making it more and more difficult to type as well. When they chop my hands off I’ll have to use a pencil in my teeth to press the keys.
Which reminds me that Hawking may make an appearance on ‘The Big Bang Theory.’ Don’t worry, I have no idea how my brain works either!
Although I wouldn’t want to go back, at the time I never considered writing longhand that much of a chore. Of course, I was tutored at home during my early years by an old-time teacher who really pushed writing skills. This is likely one of those areas where good technique makes a huge difference.
Another thing that bothers me is how smug the test makers are, for example:
In Question 17, the question itself is wrong “If x + y – 80” is a null statement with no meaning. Making it an equation (and this is an assumption from an infinite number of choices) gives it meaning “If x + y – 80 = 0”
Knowing you had a 4 sided figure which adds up to 360 the angles that are not x or y add up to 360 – 80 or 280. Since they state that the angles are equal then each must be 140 (280/2.)
That would make the answer (b) 9. How do you know? Not with my 53 yo memory.
180/3=60
360/4=90
540/5=108
720/6=120
900/7=has a fraction so don’t worry about it.
1080/8=135
1260/9=140 (we can stop now and this is ridiculous.)
How much time per question did they get?