My 12-year old son will be taking a New York State Regents exam on Friday. It’s his first big test, so I’ve been mandating study time for him to review material and do practice tests. This does not make me a popular mother. I can live with that.
The good news is that my son has started to realize that most of the mistakes he makes on the practice test are avoidable. He’s finding that when he takes his time reading the test questions–and all of the possible answers–his score improves considerably.
I am pleased: this self-knowledge is important. Even if he remembers nothing else about Earth science, perhaps he will recall that it’s often possible to figure out the pattern in his errors.
Read More: Find Purpose in Your Mistakes
If he realizes that about school work, perhaps he will (eventually) extrapolate the lesson to moral matters as well. For there’s almost always a pattern to our temptations, a pattern to our weaknesses and a pattern to our sins.
When we identify the patterns we are more likely to be able to see ways to break them. We can avoid certain types of circumstances and plan ahead to handle predictable situations better. We can anticipate how we will feel and figure out ways to change how we react.
In short, when we look at our sin patterns we prepare ourselves better for the moral tests we will face. And hopefully we become better at taking them.
