Dear That Kid Who is Stressed About Exams

Stress by Bernard Goldbach

It's exam season here at Coppell. Many of my ambitious freshmen, after having recently survived the rounds of STAAR testing, are now taking a few AP tests. My IB Seniors are taking roughly 2,070 exams (estimated) over two weeks. Naturally, this has everyone freaking out. Let me try to talk you off the ledge.

Quick confession: one of my many borderline-useless skills in life is my test-taking ability. From an early age, I just had a knack for answering multiple-choice questions. My love of reading and writing taught me how to shape a whole batch of nothing into a cogent essay. Shockingly, this did not lead to a high-powered career or prevent me from suffering from test anxiety, so I developed a few methods to deal. Put down the books and laptops for a minute and try these steps.

Aishwarya, Evalyn, and Jibi rushing to my blog.

How to Deal with Exam Stress

1. Run "The Worst Case Scenario" Test: I use this one with anything that makes me nervous. Just ask yourself: "What's the worst thing that could happen?" If you fail the test, is anyone going to shoot you? Is your entire life as you know it going to be ripped to shreds? Twenty years from now when I am reading your best-selling memoir, will you devote an entire chapter to it? Most likely you will answer "no" to all of those questions. You would do well to remember what the Friar told Romeo: "Be patient, for the world is broad and wide" and your life is too. So relax.

Breathe, Anjali, breathe. 

2. Study Smart: No matter how much Monster you drink or hours you stay awake studying, massive cramming for an AP or IB exam is not going to get you too far. You are better off going over some major concepts and actually getting eight hours of sleep and putting some decent food in your body. You will be fresher, sharper, and less stressed. 

Sid has been awake for roughly 62 hours. Fed is eating a salad. 

3. Get the Stress Out: Take an hour or so and do something that gets you out of your head. For me, that's taking my dogs to the park or getting some kind of exercise (yes, I do work out despite what my general poor health might lead you to believe). The trick to this is to find something that REALLY gets you out of your head but for a short amount of time. You can certainly binge-watch season four of Friends, but you will keeping hearing that voice in the back of your head telling you what a failure you are and how bad you're going to do on the exam. Hours and hours later you will wake up to this: 

Ack! Where did the time go?

You will barely have enough time to wipe the drool from your face before you have to run out the door to make the exam in time. Most likely you will feel like you're stuck in second gear and it's not going to be your day, your week, your month...you get the idea. 

4. Talk to Yourself: The other day I was working out to a HASfit video (I told you I workout!)and Coach Kozak said something like (I'm paraphrasing here, because as he was saying this I was trying not to die doing reverse dumbbell lunges)"If you believe you can do it, you're right. If you believe you can't, you're right. What do you believe?" I don't normally go in for such aphorisms, but doing some positive self-talk before and during an exam can help calm you down. You are the voice in your head, so be nice to yourself.

That's it. You got this. Follow these steps, stay calm, believe in yourself, ace the exam, and go back to watching Friends. 

Any tips of your own? Hit me up in the comments.