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How to Beat Test Anxiety and Take on Exams without Stress

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How to Beat Test Anxiety and Take on Exams without Stress

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Throughout this video, Thomas Frank talks about handling stress and anxiety is important in order to perform well on exams. Thomas Franks suggests asking your professor about the information on the test. This will allow you to study the materials that will be presented on the exam. It is also important to have good time management and have a good amount of time studying. While studying, it's crucial to study the material you are not as comfortable with . To handle anxiety, acting confident will give you a higher chance to succeed. Another tip to handle anxiety is writing out your worries before your exam. Lastly, lowering the value of the exam will lower your anxiety on the test. Overall, I chose this video because I tend to struggle with test anxiety, and I look forward to following these tips to overcome the stress and anxiety.

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How to Beat Test Anxiety and Take on Exams Without Stress

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How to Stop Being Constantly Overwhelmed 

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How to Stop Being Constantly Overwhelmed 

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Thomas Frank discusses the challenge of being overwhelmed. It is stated that to avoid burnout, it's important to give yourself breaks. As well as reorganizing your tasks, and re-establish your routine. This will allow you to stay consistent with your routine, and get comfortable with your habits. Lastly, it is important to figure your priorities out. Saying no to new opportunities, allows you to prioritize your priorities. I chose this video because I tend to easily get overwhelmed, and i liked the tips he suggested.

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How to Stop Being Constantly Overwhelmed

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How to Overcome Perfectionism (and the Anxiety it Causes)

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How to Overcome Perfectionism (and the Anxiety it Causes)

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Thomas Franks starts the video off with two different types of perfectionism, adaptive & maladaptive. Where adaptive perfectionist are controlled by their high standards. While maladaptive perfectionists feel pressured to meet unrealistic standards. The following tasks consist of being a perfectionist. Firstly, being a perfectionist makes tasks seem monumental, causing you to procrastinate. Secondly, constantly editing your assignments will make you take a long time it finish. Thirdly, you're too strict on yourself, and do not allow you to learn from mistakes. To overcome perfectionism, you have to realize that no one is perfect. As well as embracing imperfection, get used to making mistakes. Another way to overcome perfectionism is starting with the work, and not worrying about the mess until you're almost finished. Another method, is setting a realistic deadline and force yourself to finish. Lastly, allow others inspire and motivate you, but do not hold your work up against yours. Overall, I chose this video in order to control myself from being a perfectionist and being too harsh on myself. Thomas Franks gave good advice on what to work on and how to overcome being a perfectionist.

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How to Overcome Perfectionism (and the Anxiety it Causes) - College Info Geek

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This article mentions what causes test anxiety and how to handle test anxiety. This article fits with the videos because it gives you reasons on why you may go through test anxiety and how you are able to handle it.

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What is exam anxiety?

Almost everyone will feel nervous or experience some level of anxiety when faced with an exam, assessment, or performance situation. This is a common and natural response for many students in the preparation before, and during exams.

In fact, a moderate level of anxiety or stress is crucial to performing well - this helps us to be psychologically and physically alert in an exam or assessment situation.

The challenge is when our level of anxiety increases past an optimal level such that it interferes with our studying or performance. When anxiety is too intense, we may have difficulty learning and remembering what we need to know for the exam, find it hard to focus on questions, or demonstrate our knowledge or skills during the exam.

Even if you identify high levels of exam anxiety in yourself, the good news is that it's possible to learn effective ways to manage this so that it doesn't take over or get in the way of your performance.

What causes exam anxiety?

The skills you will find most helpful in managing exam anxiety will depend on what factors may be contributing to this. Exam anxiety may be related to:

Negative past experiences of exams

Lack of adequate preparation, or knowledge of exam-taking techniques or study methods

Unhelpful thinking about the exam situation (e.g., "I'm going to lose control!"), yourself (e.g., "I can't do this."), and/or outcome (e.g., "I'm going to fail.")

Excessive pressure to achieve and/or perfectionism

Strong fear of failure

Poor self-care, including insufficient sleep, unhealthy eating, lack of exercise or relaxation.

Taking some time to understand and identify what is contributing to your particular experience of anxiety can help you develop an effective plan to tackle it.

Top tips to manage exam anxiety

Prepare as best you can

This means studying for the exam early enough, and using effective study techniques that help you learn, understand, and remember information. Being well-prepared goes a long way to help you feel confident about your study material, which can ultimately keep stress in check.

Take care of your body for a healthy mind

When we're busy, eating well, getting regular sleep, and exercise can be easily neglected. Yet, these are essential for being at our best physically, mentally, and emotionally. Sleep, for example, is important for concentration and memory.

When planning your study schedule, prioritise fundamental self-care - this means allocating time first for things like healthy meals, ample sleep, consistent exercise, and social, enjoyable or relaxing activities. You can then plan study tasks around these.

Learn to manage the physical symptoms of anxiety

It's important to know that the physical symptoms we experience in anxiety are unpleasant but not dangerous. You can learn and practise relaxation techniques like belly breathing or progressive muscle relaxation to calm your body or relieve tension.

It's a good idea to regularly practise these when you're not feeling too overwhelmed to begin with so that the strategies can feel more natural and easier to apply during more intense times (like when you're sitting in an exam hall).

How you interpret exam anxiety can affect your academic performance. Moderate amounts of stress energise and motivate us, help us focus, and stay alert. When we view stress as helpful to study, by giving us the strength and energy to overcome challenges, this can decrease emotional exhaustion during exam-time, and improve our performance.

Be your own motivational coach

Getting caught up in negative or self-critical thoughts can leave us feeling more overwhelmed and undermine us from taking positive action. Remind yourself that exam anxiety is a common experience and that it's possible to cope. Affirm yourself by focusing on the study you have accomplished, and helpful steps you've taken in the past to complete exams before.

Connect with supportive people

Some people find studying together with other students who are in a similar situation both comforting and motivating. It's also ok to take a break from others if other people are stressing you out. Reaching out to other helpful friends or family to talk about how you feel or things outside of study can also be important.

To learn more about how to keep stress in check at exam time, The University of Melbourne Peer Health Advocates and Bupa have also put together their top tips for managing exam stress.

What can I do next?

Pick up more tips about understanding and coping with stress.

Check out the great resources on Reach Out on coping with exam stress and how to study smarter at exam time.

Work through thedesk 's self-help program for tertiary students. There are four modules that aim to help students develop skills to stay calm, be more productive, and improve their wellbeing and relationships.

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This article talks about how to handle stress and ways it affects your body. This article fits in with the videos because it allows you get a better perspective on why it's important to handle your stress.

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Stress can be brief, situational, and a positive force motivating performance, but if experienced over an extended period of time it can become chronic stress, which negatively impacts health and well-being.

Cite This Article

American Psychological Association. (2022, October 31). How stress affects your health. https://www.apa.org/topics/stress/health

Stress: We've all felt it. Sometimes stress can be a positive force, motivating you to perform well at your piano recital or job interview. But often-like when you're stuck in traffic-it's a negative force. If you experience stress over a prolonged period of time, it could become chronic-unless you take action.

A natural reaction

Have you ever found yourself with sweaty hands on a first date or felt your heart pound during a scary movie? Then you know you can feel stress in both your mind and body.

This automatic response developed in our ancient ancestors as a way to protect them from predators and other threats. Faced with danger, the body kicks into gear, flooding the body with stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol that elevate your heart rate, increase your blood pressure, boost your energy, and prepare you to deal with the problem.

These days, you're not likely to face the threat of being eaten. But you probably do confront multiple challenges every day, such as meeting deadlines, paying bills, and juggling childcare that make your body react the same way. As a result, your body's natural alarm system-the "fight or flight" response-may be stuck in the on position. And that can have serious consequences for your health.

Pressure points

Even short-lived, minor stress can have an impact. You might get a stomachache before you have to give a presentation, for example. More major acute stress, whether caused by a fight with your spouse or an event like an earthquake or terrorist attack, can have an even bigger impact.

Repeated acute stress may also contribute to inflammation in the circulatory system, particularly in the coronary arteries, and this is one pathway that is thought to tie stress to a heart attack. It also appears that how a person responds to stress can affect cholesterol levels.

Chronic stress

When stress starts interfering with your ability to live a normal life for an extended period, it becomes even more dangerous. The longer the stress lasts, the worse it is for both your mind and body. You might feel fatigued, unable to concentrate, or irritable for no good reason, for example. But chronic stress causes wear and tear on your body, too.

The long-term activation of the stress response system and the overexposure to cortisol and other stress hormones that come with it can disrupt almost all of your body's processes. This can put you at increased risk for a variety of physical and mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, digestive issues, headaches, muscle tension and pain, heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure, stroke, sleep problems, weight gain, and memory and concentration impairment.

Chronic stress may also cause disease, either because of changes in your body or the overeating, smoking, and other bad habits people use to cope with stress. Job strain-high demands coupled with low decision-making latitude-is associated with increased risk of coronary disease, for example. Other forms of chronic stress, such as depression and low levels of social support, have also been implicated in increased cardiovascular risk.

Chronic stress also suppresses the body's immune system, making it harder to recover from illnesses.

What you can do

Reducing your stress levels can not only make you feel better right now, but may also protect your health long-term. Several research studies have demonstrated, for example, that interventions to improve psychological health can have a beneficial impact on cardiovascular health. As a result, researchers recommend boosting your positive affect-feelings like happiness, joy, contentment, and enthusiasm-by making time for enjoyable activities every day.

Other strategies for reducing stress include:

Identify what's causing stress. Monitor your state of mind throughout the day. If you feel stressed, write down the cause, your thoughts, and your mood. Once you know what's bothering you, develop a plan for addressing it. That might mean setting more reasonable expectations for yourself and others or asking for help with household responsibilities, job assignments, or other tasks. List all your commitments, assess your priorities, and then eliminate any tasks that are not absolutely essential.

Build strong relationships. Relationships can be a source of stress. Research has found that negative, hostile reactions with your spouse cause immediate changes in stress-sensitive hormones, for example. But relationships can also serve as stress buffers. Reach out to family members or close friends and let them know you're having a tough time. They may be able to offer practical assistance and support, useful ideas, or just a fresh perspective as you begin to tackle whatever's causing your stress.

Walk away when you're angry. Before you react, take time to regroup by counting to 10. Then reconsider. Walking or other physical activities can also help you work off steam. Plus, exercise increases the production of endorphins, your body's natural mood booster. Commit to a daily walk or other form of exercise-a small step that can make a big difference in reducing stress levels.

Rest your mind. To help ensure you get the recommended seven or eight hours of shut-eye, cut back on caffeine, remove distractions such as television or computers from your bedroom, and go to bed at the same time each night. Research shows that activities like yoga and relaxation exercises not only help reduce stress, but also boost immune functioning.

Get help. If you continue to feel overwhelmed, consult with a psychologist or other licensed mental health professional who can help you learn how to manage stress effectively. They can help you identify situations or behaviors that contribute to your chronic stress and then develop an action plan for changing them.

Recommended Reading

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Stress can be brief, situational, and a positive force motivating performance, but if experienced over an extended period of time it can become chronic stress, which negatively impacts health and well-being.