When the word “exams” – once just an occasional whisper in your mind – becomes now a constant drone of flutters in your stomach, the first thought when you wake up and present in almost every conversation you have, you know that the shadow of exam season has almost finished stalking behind you, and is becoming a reality. However, the terrorising thought of what you’re about to endure can be slightly soothed (shock) by some good preparation. Not only do you need to be academically prepared for exam season, but (something that is missed out on in your lessons) you need to be mentally prepared by adopting the right mental attitude as otherwise, as I shall reveal, these next few weeks will be even more monotonous and uphill than necessary.
The most significant piece of advice I can give for adopting a healthy exam attitude is: do not compare yourself to others- be that friends or strangers. Frankly, how well/how much revision one person, or 10, or even 100 people does isn’t going to have even a modicum of impact on grade boundaries and therefore your grade- so don’t even bother asking “how much revision your friend did yesterday?” Tunnel vision is a technique that I would recommend to adapt, and this is one of the only times in your life where you need to solely focus on yourself, and be proud to say you’re being “selfish”.
Another imperative tip is about your mindset for after the exam itself. Picture this: you leave the exam hall with agonising tingles in your hands, an arched spine that seems it will remain that way for eternity and a bloodstream drowning in adrenaline. There’s no denying that, due to the not just mental but physical strain you’ve been under for the last 2 hours, your mind will default to overdrive, which will most likely lead to critiquing almost every answer you wrote down. Again, this is a endless pit of self-deterioration, and will not only knock your confidence for forthcoming exams, but also distract you from preparing for these forthcoming exams… so please don’t do it.
Stress: The very word itself causes one’s breathing to slightly escalate, small butterflies to flutter inside one’s stomach and one’s heart to thud marginally more aggressively. It was inevitable that this word was to come up. However, I am going to delve into its form as a “word”. For most students, stress during exam time is a verb- an action students actively (although usually unavoidably) make the choice to pursue, although I recommend taking a different approach. During exam season, tackle stress as a noun- a thing. Stress will be there for every student (regardless of whether they are Oxbridge aspirational, or couldn’t think of anything worse than going on to do A-levels or university ), and therefore we can’t deny its presence as a noun- a thing. However, we can deny it’s presence as a verb, and stop “stressING”. “Stress” (the noun), like everything in our body, has a role, and that role is to help us deal with difficult situations by making your brain sharper and giving your body more energy. Therefore, stress in the context of exams actually helps us. To stop “stressING” and instead just acknowledge the presence of the noun “stress” is certainly easier said than done, however, by acknowledging “stress” as something that is there for every student, but actually as something positive that helps us in exams (at a healthy level), it eases the pressure of it being concerning to feel this emotion, which stops us stressING.
I was keen to investigate the role that the feeling of stress played in exam season, so I asked a significant number of students in my year how stressed they had felt on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being not at all and 10 being unbearably. The average answer was 8… eight! However, to reiterate my advice, 80% of these students said that they compared how much revision they were doing to that of their friends, and 80% also said that they dwelled on their exams (both their wrong answers and exams they wish could’ve gone better). This manifests my advice- the reason students feel stressed is due to the role that my two big “no’s” play. The most important question I asked, was whether students feel that they should have mentally prepared themselves for exam season as well as academically, with 60% saying yes and 40% saying possibly. This therefore assures that mental preparation is vital in preparing for the most “enjoyable” exam season possible, which aids you to maximise your academic potential.
The shadow of exam season has now loomed 3 or 4 minutes closer, so I urge you to put away this article and get on with your (both academic and mental) preparation. Good luck!