Squad for Change volunteer, Maanya Sharma, shares her experiences with exam stress, and gives few tips that have helped her!
Feeling nervous before exams is quite normal. However, extreme feelings of anxiety and stress can have unhealthy results. Test anxiety or examination stress is something that many students face. I am one of them.
I’ve always been anxious about giving exams, especially when I had to appear for my boards. The pressure to get a good college of your choice was a lot. While a certain amount of stress is beneficial, too much stress with regard to exams can also cause some individuals to perform poorly on tests that mean a lot to them.
In my case, the pressure to perform well and succeed does not come from my family or teachers, I put this pressure on myself. Getting good grades and succeeding is very important to me. This is the reason for my stress during exams. I get panic attacks, I usually start sweating a lot and overthink a lot about what might happen if I don’t score well. There are a number of things I do, which help me overcome my stress.
- 1.Making a schedule and diving syllabus. For example, if I have a month to prepare 12 units, I take the first 15 days to learn the units and then the next 15 days for revision.
- 2.Being thorough with the syllabus. The best way, according to me, to learn anything is to write it. For instance, I read the text, understand and memorise it and then I write it down ( only key words) in a register. This helps me believe that I have learned a particular topic so that when I stress out at the last moment, the only thing I have to do to get a little reassurance, is open my register and look at the keywords.
- 3.Sometimes it is difficult to memorise a topic which has many subtopics. What I do is take the keyword in each subtopic and take the first alphabet of each keyword and create an acronym, for example, VIBGYOR. This makes remembering a lot easier. However, it is not always possible to come up with acronyms, in that case I try association. Associating important points or keywords with something that happens in daily life or objects or something that is personal to you also helps with remembering.
- 4.It is very important to take breaks. If you’ve been studying for more than 2-3 hours, your brain will automatically get exhausted and you won’t be able to study anything properly. So one can take breaks and go for a walk or a run etc.
- 5.Another thing that helps me overcome my stress is eating. Having chocolates either while you’re writing the paper or just before helps me calm myself down.
- 6.This might sound a bit like your mom, but putting your phone aside and studying really helps. Try it once, give your phone away for a week and try to complete your syllabus then. It worked out for me. If you can’t do that, because you have to study from e-books, or you just don’t want to give your phone away, after you’re done for the day, and you’re about to sleep, DO NOT look at your phone to surf on the internet or to look at reels on Instagram. Sitting with my phone once I’ve studied does not work for me at all.
- 7.Listening to music always helps.
- 8.Try not to compare other peoples’ revision to your own. Listening to other people talk about how they’ve studied only stresses me out more. Plus, if they are stressed then that might get to you as well, because it does to me. What I do in such kind of a situation is that I distance myself from everyone, physically. If that’s not possible, I just keep looking into my book ( even if I’m not reading) so that no one comes and talks to me.
These are just some techniques that I use to help study and overcome my stress. If the stress gets to a point where it is overwhelming and is affecting your day to day life, try and talk to someone about it. It is easier said than done but when you’re stressed, try giving yourself a pep talk and remind yourself that there’s absolutely nothing to worry about because you’ve studied everything and on top of that, exams don’t define you or yourself worth and intelligence.