For any student, exam month can be a stressful time. Having your entire hard-work boil down to a single evaluation can be very tense for most students, and for good reasons. Exam anxiety is completely normal to feel, and something students will learn to cope with over time.
We asked multiple schools and colleges about whether or not their students’ performances are affected by stress, and the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. Therefore, we have taken it upon ourselves to give them the best list of advice we can come up with. We have narrowed them down to four crucial points.
Prepare a schedule:
There is no better way to tackle your exams than by drafting a plan. It gives you a clear picture as to where you stand, and how you can cover a given syllabus over a set period of time.
When you start preparing a schedule, first count the number of days you have till the final day. Then see how much course work needs to be studied within that period of time. Then simply divide your time equally and spread it over your duration. This is a straight forward way to come up with a simple routine to get you ready for your exam.
However, make sure that you don’t overwork yourself. Your schedule needs to compensate for your own abilities, so don’t assign too much workload per day. Also, it’s a good practice to give yourself a day or two for a break.
Get a good night’s rest:
Overlooking one’s health is one of the most common mistakes students make during crunch time. This includes not taking breaks, not eating properly, but most importantly, ignoring sleep.
Every student should assign eight hours of uninterrupted sleep per day. This means no all-nighters, and no staying up late. If you can’t finish your work schedule for the day, leave it and tackle it tomorrow after some rest.
Contrary to popular belief, staying up late does not help your exam preparation, it only makes it worse. You are more bound to forget things when you are tired and sleepy, thus defeating the purpose of staying up late. Therefore, make sure you sleep on time and wake up fresh everyday leading up to the exam.
Test yourself often:
Exam day may be some days away, but that is no excuse not to test early. When preparing for exams, try solving some problems on your own. See how you perform under a time limit for each of the topics you have recently covered.
A handy tool for this is solving papers from the past exams and seeing how you are able to tackle them. Self-evaluation at home will give you a good idea where you stand and what areas need to be worked on more.
It also helps you to get the edge off and feel more confident about the impending test day.
Relax on the Eve of Exam:
This may come off as a strange advice to some, but on the day before your exam, don’t study. Or in the very least, study as less as possible, then dedicate your whole day for relaxing.
Prepare your stationary or whatever you need to bring with you on the exam day, take a day off by going to the park, but don’t put an extra stress on yourself.
The reasoning behind this is simple. You have put a lot of stress on yourself up till this point, so now you need to let off some of that load and take it easy. You should be able to walk into the exam room relaxed, confident and feeling great. There’s always a temptation to go over your course material one last time, however, just skim through it if you have to, but don’t stress too much about what you don’t know. You have already done plenty enough and from here on in, there is not much you can do.
So before the exam day, relax, stay calm and feel confident.
Hopefully, these tips should guide the students towards giving great exams without exerting themselves to exhaustion. Dealing with exam is a good life lesson in general as it teaches you about preparing for a big day, and then handling it with grace and without breaking down. Students should remember that exams are not the final straw and are merely the tests to judge their skills. There are many more tests to come and being able to tackle them one by one will get you to your ultimate goal.
Author Bio: Miesha Tate is a school counselor and life-coach that mostly focuses on young people. During her work at Aussie Assignment Writers Australia, she has helped students and teenagers to cope with life issues as well as guide them through their school career.
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