So how scary are exams?

Hi i am about to do my first real exam in english and wanted to know if they are as scary as my mates make out thanks.

no, just say calm and if u have revised well i'm sure u will do good and be happy with the results u get.
but the main thing is u need to stay calm cos if u dont then u will go blank and end up doing bad
just relax and i'm sure u will get the grade u want. :smile:

all the best

Reply 2

ivybridge

Exams have legitimately never shook me; they're as scary as you make them unless you have anxiety.

Reply 3

Simes

They are as scary as you allow them to be. The solution is familiarity: mock exams.

The more exams you do, the easier they get. I was lucky, we did Xmas and Summer exams for two years in junior school and every year in secondary school. When I did my O Levels (GCSEs to you), I had done 13 lots of exams, probably about 100 exams in total. The real exams were dead easy and non-scary because we all knew what to expect and how to do them.

You can get past papers online or convince your school / parents to buy them. Then using an alarm clock, sit at a table and do an exam. Repeat this over and over and over. It does not matter if you even do the same paper. You do not have to do this in every subject, the technique is much the same for any written exam.

Once you get the hang of The Number One Secret To Doing Exams™, you will find they are not scary.

The Number One Secret To Doing Exams™ is…

… time management.

5-10 minutes at the start to read the entire paper slowly. Work out what is required. If there are options, choose which questions to answer and cross out the others. Based on how many marks each question is worth, work out how much time to spend on each question. Allow 5 minutes at the end for checking. Work out a timetable for the exam of when you should be at each major question / section. Now start working on question 1. Stop when you have answered it or have run out of allocated time for it and start on question 2. Only when you have answered the final question do you use any unused time to go back to incomplete questions. The 5 minutes at the end are NOT for changing answers, but for making sure you have written something for every question you should have answered. That is, compare the question sheet with your answer sheet. Put your pen down, you're done.

Deciding to spend 15 minutes of the exam just planning and checking will get you far more marks than spending those 15 minutes scribbling, panicking and making stupid mistakes.

So, ask for mock papers and practise, practise, practise.

Reply 4

CoolCavy

Volunteer Team

well i am an anxious kind of person but as long as you prepare you will be fine :smile:

as my physics teacher said to my class:
'if you have revised you will be fine, if you haven't you won't be' :h:

Reply 5

gapyear2018

Original post by jwelton99

Hi i am about to do my first real exam in english and wanted to know if they are as scary as my mates make out thanks.

When I did my statistics exam I was surprised about how chilled it was- it literally felt like another test. Only this time I would get a qualification for it :tongue:

. It's not scary at all especially if you revise for it. Although I was more anxious before(slightly) I opened the paper than during.

Reply 6

LizzyDymond

A lot of the time people tend to big-up exams and make them seem scary just to make them seem brave and experienced. For the most part, this simply isn't true. I've never sat a single exam where a totally unexpected or insanely difficult question came up, and that's having sat 12 GCSEs and 4 AS levels. I try not to talk to anyone about the exam, before or after it, unless they are my closest friends and they'll be honest with me about how they found it and how hard they worked. I know that if I listened to everyone else I'd get intimidated by the amount of work they'd done compared to me, or how easy they found it, etc etc. Just try and block it all out and concentrate on what helps YOU manage, and only listen to the people you trust. :smile:

Chin up and don't be too stressed!

Reply 7

Pro Crastination

They are scary to begin with, however, with GCSEs you'll have so many that it just won't phase you after a while. Like one poster said above, do mocks, and plenty of them. Sit them in exam conditions; silent room, timed conditions, only have access to your pens/pencils/sheets of paper... Once you've done that a few times the real exam will just be another repeat.