As your exams begin to approach, exam tension can become quite an inevitable feeling for students. Your ability to handle exam tension will greatly affect the outcome and performance at the end of the day. Tension as we well know has to do with mental worry or emotional strain that makes natural relaxed behavior impossible. In other words, the more tensed-up you are, the less relaxed you’ll be in the exam hall, and this will have great effects on how much of what you’ve read you remember and how you answer questions.
Handling exam tension is therefore a skill you’d not want to do without as a student. In other to help you develop this skill, let’s look at five time-tested tips for handling tension in exam conditions:
1. Ensure you make hay while the sun shines:
More than 70% of the students who are usually most tensed up as exams draw closer when asked will tell you that the main reason for the worry and anxiety was that they were scared that they hadn’t prepared enough. Even though you can always make the most of the ‘injury time’ before your exam, in other to feel more relaxed, you must prepare adequately beforehand. With some time-management skills, planning, and discipline, you should be able to take small steps every day toward completing the material you need to cover for your exams.
2. Stop all major reading at least 30 minutes before the exam time:
The importance of practicing this cannot be over-emphasized because so many students fall prey to last-minute confusion and apprehension by just coming across something they had forgotten to read or some question that posed problematic to answer before they were called into the exam hall. It’s okay to revise notes and especially jotted-down points before the exams. However, trying to take in new info in that short time can be disastrous. Moreover, once your state of mind has been negatively affected before the exams, even what you already know may prove difficult to remember.
3. Be confident and positive:
Be confident and positive! Sounds easy and cliche, right? After all, we have all heard this before. However, it has been discovered that a great number of students complain internally about what the lecturer or teacher didn’t teach well or what is so difficult about the course or subject and so many other negative thoughts and ideas. A positive attitude is a very crucial tool for handling exam tension. Being optimistic and confident that you’ll remember what you’ve read, write well and perform well preps your brain positively, helps you stay relaxed, and goes a long way in determining the outcome of your exams.
4. Recap what you’ve read:
By asking you to recap what you’ve read, I’m trying to emphasize what you’ve studied, trying to remember things you’ve read and revised without trying too hard as well as discussing what you’ve read with others and asking yourselves likely questions. This helps to refresh your memory much like the way the icons that previously didn’t display properly on your computer desktop display well when refreshed. Remember, do not do this when it’s just minutes to the exam because it can cause confusion and make you more tense up.
5. Commit your exams to God in prayer:
This a very important tip indeed that is often treated as unimportant. You will feel much more relaxed about your exams when you’ve committed them before God in the place of prayer and most especially if you’ve carried out your responsibility of preparing adequately.
The truth is that a lot of students already start failing when they set their minds in a negative state of worry, tension, fear, and anxiety by not doing what needs to be done. This, therefore, means that if you can develop this enviable and desirable skill of handling exam tension, more than 75% of your success will be already guaranteed.