Improving Your Grades by Better Managing Exam Stress

My struggles with exam stress

Nobody likes sitting for exams. The very mention of it makes me shudder as it does a lot of other people too. The thought that a few pieces of paper and some writing could at times hold your entire future in the balance is pretty daunting, to put it mildly.

Growing up in an Asian country, exams were a regular occurrence. As soon as you could read, construct a legible sentence and do the simplest arithmetic, off you went to that big quiet hall with the other kids. You’d do this every year, up to three times a year for at least the next decade if not longer, and in the weeks leading up to it, you are bombarded by thoughts of all the potential ramifications of not doing this exam right.

In some ways, our grades do define us. As kids, they determine which class we get put in or if we could move up a grade. In High School, they determine what colleges we can get into and after that our grades could affect our job prospects which in turn impacts the rest of our lives as a whole.

Now imagine these stakes coupled with the intense pressure and scrutiny that come from all the “societal expectations” of pushy relatives and nosey, competitive acquaintances. The pressure can be unbearable and that stress alone makes all the difference. I have seen friends far more capable than me who fall short on their desired results simply because they could not deal with the stress leading up to the exam. In more extreme cases, people have fallen ill and have even died because of the enormous pressure they feel has been put on them.

I too was in a similar position for many years and there were times, especially in high school, where I did not achieve as well as I thought I should have simply because I could not shake off the pressure that loomed above me. The whole process of studying for the exam was already mentally draining before it even started. I doubted my ability to study through everything in time for the exam and questioned the use of memorising the syllabus back to front if I was just going to shut down and forget everything when I got into the examination hall. It was then I realised I needed to change my approach which over the years, slowly but surely allowed me to improve.

Preparation

Oftentimes, the biggest source of stress comes from the feeling of being unprepared. At the same time, your approach to how you prepare for your exams can make all the difference in how well you end up doing. That being said, the tips I will cover will be about how to prepare for your exams in a way that allows you to manage the pressure you are feeling.

Don’t just be prepared, FEEL prepared

Before I jump into the actual steps, let me start by saying that there is a difference between being and feeling prepared. While being prepared helps you in terms of the knowledge and information that you will need, feeling prepared is what is going to give you the confidence to walk in and out of that exam with the peace of mind that you have done everything necessary and then some to get the grade you need.

You can read your textbooks cover to cover or spend every waking hour of your study break revising and still feel like you haven’t done enough. Those worries and doubts are going to come into the exam with you and will inevitably harm your performance.

These tips will help you better manage your exam related stress by showing you ways to better improve your preparation by not just being more prepared but feeling it too.

Don’t wait for the study break to begin studying

A common mistake made by most people, myself included, is thinking that the couple of weeks to a month before the exam is the time to begin your revision. That feeling of sitting down on the first day of your study break to get started will never fail to take your stress levels up a few notches.

Regardless of what subjects you are studying for, you are going to get stressed out when you are confronted by a whole semester’s worth of information that you’ll need to take in. If you start studying at this point you will definitely not feel prepared, you may not even be prepared. So the best thing to do is to get an early start.

Rather than wait till the end of the semester to try to cram everything in, spend an hour or two after class to go through what you learnt that same day. Nowadays where it is more common for classes to be recorded, you could even sit through the entire lesson once again.

The way I did it was that after class, I would go home or to the library and go over what I learned once again. Usually, I would add on slightly to the notes I already made in class and then rewatch the lecture or parts of it and retype that topic’s notes entirely. If I have time later in the week, I may do it again. This should take no more than two hours of your time and you do not have to do it in a single sitting.

By the time the study break comes around, you would have already seen this lecture at least twice and have a decent recollection of what you learnt from having repeatedly redone the same notes. All you need to do now is do the same thing one more time and then redo those same notes without referring to anything else.

You will be surprised at how much you remember and this will do wonders for your confidence leading up to the exam. This will also allow you to remember information better without having to devote your entire being to studying so that you can focus on other things such as eating and sleeping right prior to your exam.

Remember, do not use the study break as the time to refresh your memory. Instead, use it to test your recollection of everything you have learned in the past semester. If you follow the same steps I did, the study break will not only be less stressful but will also boost your confidence because this will be your first opportunity to show yourself that you know your stuff. You will have proven to yourself that you are armed with the information required to do your exam well and this confidence will aid your ability to recall info while doing your paper.

Get your hands on past year papers

The importance of past year papers cannot be overstated. If you can do a past year, you can do the exam, simple as that. What better way is there to prove to yourself that you can do the exam well than by actually doing it and seeing it with your own eyes? The stress that comes with the uncertainty of what to expect will be greatly alleviated when you already have a feel of how to answer the questions set for you. The main worry from people who do past years is that there is no way to know for sure the exact questions that you will get.

For a lot of my more hardworking friends, the burnout from doing years and years' worth of past papers, coupled with the stress of that bit of uncertainty that still remains, often has a negative impact on their performance in the actual exam. Thus, I felt a more balanced and less time consuming approach would be better. Luckily enough, there was such a way to ensure that all my bases were covered without forcing me to spend too much time doing so. It is quite simple but there is a slight amount of preparation involved.

I recommend first getting a few years worth of past papers. Preferably, up to 5–6 years worth if possible. However, do not attempt to do each paper in its entirety yet. Instead, look through them and identify questions for each and every topic covered in your syllabus. As soon as you feel like you have grasped a topic, do the corresponding past year question and by the time of the exam, you would have been able to do at least one question from every topic of that particular subject. This will take far less time than doing each paper one by one while at the same time, giving you the peace of mind of knowing that you are capable of answering a wider range of questions. However, there is still more that can be done to further improve your confidence and mitigate your stress that a past year paper could assist you with.

Once you have finished doing the relevant questions, look at each past year as a whole. In most cases, you will notice trends and patterns that may help you pinpoint what exactly might be coming out during your sitting. Although you are expected to study the whole syllabus, chances are you won’t be quizzed on the entire thing.

Normally, you will see questions that always come out without fail and other questions that seem to rotate each year. Sometimes, you may already have been told of this in class.

However, do not take this as an excuse to skip out on studying certain topics. Instead, use this to be able to allocate more time to what you have seen is more likely to appear in your paper.

By making use of past papers in this way, you can mitigate stress on two different fronts. Firstly, you will know for sure that you will not be off guard by a certain question or style of questioning. Secondly, even if for some reason this particular exam paper does not follow the pattern you have observed, you will still be familiar with whatever questions you see before you because you have already gone through questions for each topic of your syllabus.

On top of feeling more confident for the exam, doing this should also not take you too long as well. Depending on the kind of subject you are doing, one long question or a set of questions related to one topic should only take up to an hour for you to do. This will allow you to not neglect other areas such as food and sleep in order to ensure that you will enter your exam in the best condition possible.

Teach your friends

Another helpful tip would be to help your friends and to explain the things you’ve learned to them. An unfortunate misconception in an extremely competitive society is that any help you give to another person is to your own detriment. In high school especially, some parents made it a point to ensure that their children do not share any of their notes or knowledge with the other kids close to exam season.

There seemed to be a fear that helping your friends out would mean you’d do worse or you wouldn’t stand out as much if everyone did an equally good job. While my parents never forced such a thing on me, I felt like this was a somewhat normal thing and also chose to study alone and not share anything I’ve learnt. It was only when I started college that I realised just how wrong I was.

Firstly, studying alone can be extremely stressful for some people. When you’re left by yourself with your thoughts, you are opening yourself more to all the exam related stress you should be trying to keep in check. It can be an isolating experience as well and you may feel helpless and with nobody to turn to in times of uncertainty.

Secondly, studying with and teaching your friends actually has quite a fair share of benefits. It is the courteous thing to do to help someone out but that aside, helping to explain things to your friends is not only something that isn’t detrimental to you but will help you better manage your stress and help you feel more prepared.

Why is that you ask? Simple. Teaching what you’ve learnt to your friends is normally a three-stage process that goes something like this.

Firstly, you run through everything you’ve learnt in the past semester. In many ways, you are basically repeating the lecture to your friend and you may use this time to observe which parts exactly they may have a bit of trouble understanding.

Secondly, you will have to break down the more complicated parts and explain them in a simpler way to your friend. Normally, you do this in a way that both you and your friend can personally understand and relate to.

Lastly, you will have to answer whatever questions your friend still has in a way that is clear, direct and easy to understand.

If you look at these steps properly, what you are actually doing is improving your ability to recall and retain the information you’ve learnt, the ability to internalise that information in a way that is best suited to maximize your understanding of it and lastly, your ability to apply that information to answer a question. These are the necessary skills that you will need to answer any examination question to a respectable standard and you have just demonstrated all those skills without even realising it.

If you have the opportunity to do it repeatedly or with different people, all the better for you. The more you share and teach what you know, the better you will be at it and the more likely you are to find new ways to internalise and apply whatever information you know. This is my personal favourite among these tips as it requires the least effort. It not only allowed me to recall and apply what I learnt in a comfortable and happy setting, but also affirmed my own self-confidence in regards to doing a good job on my paper.

Do a trial run

The concept of feeling prepared should not be something that just lasts up to the point of the exam itself. This feeling must remain with you as you sit for your exam and all the way until you get your results. This was a big struggle that I and many of my friends faced. We adapted our study methods, helped each other out and we were confident as can be until we actually got into the exam hall and sat in our chairs. There’s a certain tension and eeriness about an examination room that I can’t quite describe but it has a way of sapping up whatever confidence you had coming in and fogging up that once clear head of yours.

For many people, how they study and how they handle pressure before an exam isn’t an issue. Their main struggle is shutting down in the exam itself. It is an uncomfortable setting and it can get to you. The room may be too hot or cold, the chair you’re sitting on may be extremely uncomfortable or being unable to go to the bathroom and having to hold it in until the allowable time period.

These may seem like small things under normal circumstances and indeed they are, but in an examination setting where tensions are usually at their highest, such inconveniences can have far-reaching consequences. Even if you are doing your exam within the comfort of your own home, something could still happen. You could have a photographic memory and remember every page of every textbook you ever read or every word spoken by the teacher in every class, but if something in that room gets you flustered, it will affect your performance. So, this next tip will focus on how you can continue to keep a cool head in the exam itself.

A couple of weeks before the exam, do a past year paper under the same conditions as you would on the day itself. If you are supposed to do your exam at home, begin setting up your workspace if there isn’t one already. If you're doing it at school, get a feel of the room you’re doing your exam in. If you can, use that same room or a similar space to do your trial run.

To make it seem more like an exam hall, have your friends come in and do their trial runs with you too but make sure not to get distracted and conduct yourself as if it were the real thing. This will allow you to handle the anxiety of being in the examination setting by making it seem less daunting and more familiar to you.

While that is my recommended way of doing a trial run, I do things a slight bit differently. After being informed of the setting and procedures of a particular exam, I would do my trial run under slightly more difficult circumstances. For example, if we would be allowed notes or a cheat sheet into the exam, I would do my trial run as if I would be examined without such things being allowed. Another thing I would do, is do my trial run somewhere noisy and where I am more prone to being distracted.

My logic behind doing this is so I will not only be familiar with the place I am doing my exam in but find it more comfortable. By doing this, not only will my entry into the examination room not feel as stressful, but it would also be a sort of relief. For me, it is a significant confidence booster to go into a place and do a task knowing that I am capable of doing that same task under more difficult circumstances. That being said, this works differently for different people. Some people are more comfortable replicating the exact conditions of the exam rather than up the ante a bit and that is perfectly understandable. What matters is that you pick the method that best works for you.

However, regardless of your preferred style, keep one very important thing in mind. Never compromise on time. Whatever time limit you are allocated in an exam is often the ideal time to produce a paper of a high standard so, you have to make the most of whatever time you are given. Do not aim to finish your exam in the fastest time possible and also be mindful of not taking too long. Your aim in the trial run is to maximise every second of your time and to find a rhythm that works for you. Once you do this and couple it with the information you have already stored in your head from all those earlier exercises, your answers will just flow out and you will feel that your efforts have paid off.

A few closing notes

As I reach the end of this guide, allow me to share with you one of the best pieces of advice that I was ever given: “When asked a question, never let this be the first time you have ever seen or heard it.” This advice resonated very strongly with me and it’s something I always bear in mind every time I begin preparing for an exam. If you have been asked a question before, it means either you have answered it or have heard it answered before and now all you have to do is answer it again. This allows you to never get caught off guard in the exam because you will know that as soon as you open that question paper, you will have seen the same thing that you have seen all this while or at the very least, something extremely similar.

Another piece of advice I can leave you with is to never force yourself to remember things. One of my biggest mistakes was getting stressed out at the thought of having to remember so many things in such a limited span of time. Oftentimes, this got in the way of me actually being able to keep that info in my head. Chances are, if you feel pressured to do something you’re probably not going to do it that well with all that stress weighing you down. Therefore, the best thing you can do is learn unconsciously. If something isn’t easy to remember, make it hard to forget.

That’s what those earlier tips will help do for you. By preparing early in small, repeated steps you are likely to retain more information without taking as much effort to. Look at it like a song you hear playing on the radio everyday. You don’t go out of your way to read the lyrics and sometimes you don’t even mean to listen to it in the first place. Despite that, it will stay in your head and you will find yourself somehow knowing the words by heart. If you apply this logic to your study process, you will not only find it less difficult and less stressful but you will also feel more confident knowing that you cannot forget a bigger amount of what you learned.

I chose to write this guide for you because I know the frustrations that come with underperforming because of stress. I went from someone who spent all day and all night studying to barely manage a C in high school to consistently scoring As and Bs from college onwards with significantly less effort. By coming up with a study method that catered towards removing anything I found stressful, I was not only able to score better but also feel more confident and even enjoy the process leading up to my exams.

You don’t have to be more intelligent or even more hardworking than the others. All you have to do is find the rhythm that best works for you, manage that fear and enjoy the process and you will do as good if not better than the smartest person or the hardest worker in the class. My only hope from writing this for you is these tips will help set you on that path too and help you as much as they helped me if not more.