How To Manage Stress During Exams
A fellow student’s guide – How to manage stress during exams
As we all know, exam times are very stressful, and there is constant pressure on us students both personally and from others, like our parents and teachers. We have certain expectations from ourselves, goals, and target marks that we want to achieve through hard work.
Then there is what our parents and teachers expect of us. And then of course there is the competitive spirit that most of us have, whether we accept it or not. When you do better than your peers in an exam and get appreciated by your teachers, parents, and friends, it is a big confidence boost and gives a sense of pride that you strive for. But we don’t always get these results and the thought that we won’t provide us with stress.
These expectations are healthy and to an extent important too, as they constantly push us to do better and perform to the best of our abilities, but at the same time they cause immense stress. Our mental health needs to know How to manage stress during exams.
Considering How to manage stress during exams, as a very important topic, I’m sharing some tips to manage the stress that helped me during exams, I hope these tips are helpful to you too, to keep calm and have a clear head during exams, keeping the stress at bay.
How To Manage Stress During Exams – 10 Tips
- Make timetable
- Declutter your study space
- Keep your books away an hour before your exam
- Try to keep your expectations realistic
- Keep a balance between your health and education
- Try Completing your Daily chores on time
- Meditation
- Keep Your Breaks in your schedule
- Focus on what’s next
- Try not to panic and procrastinate
Make a timetable
When figuring out how to manage stress during exams, You should Plan what subjects you’ll study on the day and at what time. When you have a timetable, gives clarity on what needs to be done and eliminates the stress that comes with deciding where to start, and what to do first.
How to manage stress during exams ?
Stay away from the cell phone.
Answer – Keep a distance from Mobile phone
Declutter your study space
Clutter creates a sense of chaos; a clean room means a clear mind.
A friend of mine once gave me this suggestion to clear my desk of things I don’t need, books that aren’t relevant to the subject I’m studying at the time and only keep the books and stationary I need at that time, in my workspace. To be honest, I didn’t get the importance of this unless I tried it. And it worked wonders! So the psychology behind this is that when you have unnecessary things lying around, they remind you of the things that you need to do, unfinished tasks, this can cause 2 major problems
- You get distracted and leave what you’re doing to put those things in the right place, thus wasting time.
- They remind you that you leave things unfinished, so you start thinking you will leave your current work too.
Also, when you have everything you need in one place, you won’t need to go around looking for things while studying and won’t lose focus. When your surroundings are uncluttered then you can put your full focus on your work.
How to manage stress during exams ?
Study shows that walks brings great relief to your mind when it is cluttered.
Answer – Take a Walk it reduces stress.
Keep your books away an hour before your exam
This is an important factor when you know how to manage stress during exams. It’s better to have confidence in what you have learned, studying just before the exam only makes you think you aren’t prepared enough, and that stress may cause you to go blank when the exam starts.
I had this habit of cramming up difficult topics just before the exam started. Even though I had studied them before I felt like I didn’t remember anything, it’s natural to think this way but these last-minute studies don’t help anyone, they only cause stress which causes panic while writing the exam. If you finished your syllabus the day before the exam then trust yourself, You are better prepared than you think!
Try to keep your expectations realistic
The most important thing while trying to manage stress is that we manage our expectations and keep realistic expectations, setting realistic targets and goals that we can achieve. When you set unrealistic targets and don’t achieve them you tend to stress and panic. So instead set small goals and targets, so that when you reach them, you have a sense of achievement, these small wins are very important in managing stress.
Keep a balance between your health and education
This is another factor when figuring out How to manage stress during exams. It’s important to take out time for self-care, it’s very important for our mental health. It is very easy to forget basic needs when exams are stressing you out.
Try Completing your Daily chores on time
Get sufficient sleep, don’t skip meals, and don’t stop doing the things that you love. Balance is important, studying all day at the cost of these things is a big mistake that should be avoided at all costs.
How to manage stress during exams ?
Meditation is the best possible way to keep yourself positive. It not only gives a direction to the thoughts, It helps the mind grasp things in the best possible manner.
Answer – Meditation.
Keep Your Breaks in your schedule
When you set a routine for yourself, you should make sure to add regular breaks to relax and refresh your mind. It’s shown by research that most people have a 45-minute attention span, so as we go over this limit, we tend to get distracted and might have a difficult time retaining information i.e. our productivity decreases and we’ll take much longer to finish a topic than we would when we do it with a fresh mind after a break.
Take a Walk.
Study shows that walks brings great relief to your mind when it is cluttered.
Focus on what’s next
When one exam ends, forget about it and focus on the next one. Start preparation for each exam with a clean slate. If one exam doesn’t go as expected, don’t put too much thought into it, what’s done is done you cannot change it so it’s better to focus on what’s in your control and give it your all.
Try not to panic and procrastinate
Don’t be too hard on yourself and take stress when your preparation is not going at the pace you expected it to go at, instead look ahead, make a routine, and cover up what was left.
There have been times when I have not able to complete my daily target of chapters because I couldn’t complete my hourly targets lagging in the first few sessions, so many times instead of trying to work faster and cover up lost
time I started to procrastinate and give up, thinking that it cannot be done so it’s better to give up and ended up wasting the whole day getting hardly anything done. Doing that never did anyone any good. At times when I did not panic and backed myself to cover up the work I missed, made a new routine for the day, and slightly increased the topics to cover in each study session, I managed to finish the whole thing in time.
So you have to believe in yourself, stay focused, and not panic in such times. At first, it may feel difficult but slowly you will get used to it and each time you successfully achieve your small targets your self-confidence gets a boost, motivating you to work harder.
How to manage stress during exams ?
Get power naps during your break time.
Deep Sleep
Now as we have discussed many tips on how to manage stress during exams. Ultimately you need to keep your mental health a top priority. Things come and go in life and life goes on. You must not take things very seriously. Everything is alright, if not, it will be all alright.
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