Exam Anxiety: HELP!

So, after ages of thinking I'm stupid and useless, turns out I'm just **** at exams. I had my exam papers back this year to see just how I managed to mess up (A-A* in homework, past papers etc. and E-C in actual exams) and it turns out I have a big fat habit of crossing out the right answer at the last minute. Which I want to cry at now, honestly, because the number of correct answers I deleted on papers would easily have tallied up to As overall had I left them be. That, and questions that seemed impossible in the exam hall are the easiest thing when I do them again (still under timed conditions) outside of the exam situation. This is a trend I've noticed for a few years now, and the more I seem to revise for a subject, the worse I end up doing in the exam at the end of it.

So, my question is; how can I get over this and move on so I can get the grades I KNOW I'm capable of?

This isn't a case of me not knowing the subject matter because I do. I made sure of that. I didn't just memorise the stuff, I learned it off by heart. It's an issue of me going into the exam and suddenly shutting down.

Has anyone found any tricks that help them? I don't feel stressed in exams (almost worryingly calm, really), and I make sure to check my answers if I finish early (which is often). But I might just be psyching myself up subconsciously.

Does sitting the exam under special conditions—i.e. on your own, in a smaller room—help?

Do past papers actually help with revision? Is there a certain way you should do them?

Is there anything you can do before an exam to help? I've heard people swear by having alcohol or smoking before an exam makes a world of difference to them, but that seems counterintuitive to me...?

Thoughts, anyone? This is my last chance to smash this. I missed my grades for vet school by 2 UMS/1 mark in two subjects in August and I cannot afford to give anything but my best this year, but I'm at a loss as to what more I can do. 😩

Thanks TSR!

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 1

Trevish

Hmm
Get yourself Motivated and do not stress
I don't always approve in past papers in the beginning
I prefer excelling in my chapters before starting with past papers. You have to take into consideration the difficulty of your homework and exams papers. Can i know what subjects do you do? Revision differs from subject to subject

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Reply 2

Trevish

Also, ignore the people drinking alcohol or smoking before exams. They usually do so to stress out. I recommend to listen to music or play some small games to relax urself

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 3

Jade CMinds

If you genuinely know the topic content, and you genuinely know how to answer the exam questions (these are two very different things!) - then we need to dig a little deeper. I noticed that you said that you have plenty of time at the end to go through and cross out all your correct answers and write incorrect ones instead (and this is where you loose most of your marks). You also said that questions that you can do easily outside of the exam hall you can’t do whilst sitting the paper. These two statements are the tell tale signs that something else maybe going on.

Exams are stressful - even when we don’t acknowledge that we are stressed - our bodies feel it. But strangely I’m not going to suggest trying to stay calm (how can you do that when you don’t feel yourself having a stress response) - try and do the paper differently. Firstly, slow right down when you are answering questions, you don’t want to have too long at the end of the paper, you want to take your time and answer it correctly first time. So - when you get to a question do the following:

Read the question slowly

Think about how you may answer

Read the question again

Think about your answer again

Decide whether you are going to answer the question or not (I will come back to this later)

I know this seems obvious but miss reading, going off on a tangent and misinterpreting are all common mistakes - you want to be confident in your first answer (to try and limit your second guessing). Also, if you have no time at the end you have less time to second guess yourself. My old Physics teacher told me once to never second guess a well thought out answer as the second guess is always wrong, you should go with your first instinct. Obviously the exceptions are silly clerical errors - spelling etc.

Ok - so once you have slowed down then we can work on point 5 of the above list - never do an exam paper in order - I will show you my preferred order.

Questions that you can answer relatively quickly and require minimal thought or struggle (commonly short answer questions)

Questions that you know how to do but require more time with either writing or working out (commonly longer answer questions)

Questions that you think you could get to the answer eventually but just requires thinking a little more or playing around with the numbers

Questions where you have no idea how to start

Each time you go through the paper you read all the questions that you haven’t answered - in the way I have summarised. This process does a few things - it makes sure you get all your guaranteed correct answers in the bag straight away and it helps answer difficult questions when your mind is stressed. Have you ever wondered why when you have spent 10 minutes in the exam room agonising over a question that you simply can’t do suddenly gets solved in your head within the first minute of leaving the exam room - you get that ohhhh yeahhhh moment where you could kick yourself. This is because your brain finds it difficult to retrieve information when it is in a stressed state.

When you read a question properly but decide to leave it your brain hasn’t forgotten about that question - in fact quite the opposite - whilst your brain is busy doing another question all the stress is then on what you are doing and not on the difficult question - so actually there is no longer stress around the hard question and your brain is subconsciously trying to find the answer in its non-stressed state. So by the time you come to actually do the question you may have read it three times already and it should be easier to do. Hope that makes sense?

You will need to test whether this new method works for you - so I wouldn’t do it cold turkey on your major exam - test in out first on some smaller tests. Also as a bonus tip I have one more suggestion - do your revision and exam practice in two different locations. So, if you study in the library do tests in an old classroom, or if you study at home do tests in the library. If finding a different location is hard school classrooms are usually a good option, or if it has to be in the house maybe in your parents bedroom, wherever it is you want it to very different to your study environment. This is because your brain will find it easier to retrieve information in your study location, thereby giving you falsely high exceptions of what you may get in the real exam.

Ok I hope that helps and makes sense.

All the best

Jade

Coordinated Minds

Reply 4

Scitty

Original post by Trevish

Chemistry, Biology, and Physics. The latter two aren't as much an issue as Chemistry, but I still seem to have problems in the exam hall in some places.

Original post by Jade CMinds

snip

Thank you! I never thought of the different place for studying and exam practice, but it makes sense. I'll try to do them that way and see if that makes a difference.

Generally I try to follow that order of answering questions. If I know a question will take more time, I skip to the next question I know I can do. How much does highlighting etc help with question comprehension? I go through and pick out key components of each question but is that likely to be more of a hindrance than anything else?

Thanks again for your help. :smile:

I'm having to resit as an external candidate this year so don't have any tutors/teachers to get advice from.

Reply 5

Jade CMinds

Hi,
You may find the subject that you do the worst in is the one that you understand the most. A lot of the time we under perform in tests/exams because we assume we know what the question is asking (not sure if this is your problem as you said you get stuff right and then cross it out) - but just incase.

Highlighting or underlining is ok but it more important to take your time and read the question properly a few times - what is it really asking - not what is it that you think it is asking. An example is an antibody question - these come up all the time on biology papers - pretend you didn't revise immune response and you got an antibody question. Most people freak out and think that they don't know what they are doing - but actually 95% of these questions are actually asking about protein structure - but students see a certain set of words and jump to a conclusion.

So instead of highlighting what you think is important just make sure you read the question slowly and carefully each time you pass it over.

I hope that helps - if you need anything else just let me know.

Jade

Reply 6

Scitty