Description: Physics and Maths tutor Thanasis shares advice on how to manage stress throughout examination preparation.
How can I help my child with exam stress?
Exam season? It is often noticed on students that the pressure of exams may cause them stress. Although a small amount of pressure can sometimes be useful to keep students focused during exam time, if it becomes too much study can seem impractical and impossible.
What does exam stress feel like?
The main symptoms of exam stress and stress in general are usually losing touch with fiends and activities, feeling low and overwhelmed, experiencing trouble making decisions, loss of appetite or overeating, lack of sleep, tense muscles and headaches, lack of motivation and facing memory blanks. Stress symptoms can affect your body, your thoughts and feelings, and your behaviour.
Being able to identify common stress symptoms can help with managing them. On the other hand, stress that is left unchecked and disregarded can contribute to several health problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity and diabetes.
Why do people experience exam stress?
Exam stress is extremely common and normal. Some of the reason that people might experience it are because of worrying about exam performance, struggle to study, feeling unprepared or lack of studying, the need to recall a large amount of information and family pressure towards success.
Managing exam stress
Study Ideas
- Have a neat, clean and quiet space to work and provide yourself easy access to any materials you may need.
- Get accurate information in regard to what the exam involves and plan your study time about 50 minutes long separated by 5-10 minutes breaks.
- Ask your teacher if you’re unsure of what to expect or what will be tested.
- Ask a friend or your parents for help. Sometimes the best way of understanding things is by explaining them to other people.
Revision Period
- Manage your time correctly and leave plenty of time for revision.
- Develop a timetable where you can track and manage your process. This way you can easily spot and target your weak areas.
- Take a small break as soon as you realise that you are losing concentration but avoid getting distracted.
- A regular exercise will reduce stress, boost your energy, clear your mind and help you sleep better.
Exam Day
- Do not panic. It is natural to feel some exam nerves.
- Eliminate stress and panic by closing your eyes and taking long, slow deep breaths
- Give yourself a mental prep-talk by repeating ‘’ I am calm’’ or ‘’I will do fine’’.
- If you your mind goes blank during an exam question, move to the next question and return back to that question later. Time management is also important during the exam.
- If you experience things like distracting noises, the need of water, sun shining on your paper, you need to remember the invigilator is there to assist you.
- Read the exam instructions carefully and quickly survey every page of the exam paper.
- Priority is the key. Firstly, you need to give priority to the questions that you are able to answer and then divide your time according to the importance and marks of each question.
- Make sure to answer the easiest questions at first to secure marks in the least amount of time
- Do not rush through the exam.
- Be consistently aware of the time left and give yourself time to proofread.
After the Exam
- Do not keep thinking about it and let your emotions out.
- Do not spend time criticising yourself for where you think you went wrong.
- Give some credit to yourself for the things you did right and learn from the part that you know you could have done better.
- Plan to reward yourself for all the hard work and get rid of the remaining stress. (spend time with a friend, do enjoyable activities etc.)