Dealing with exam anxiety

Exams are stressful for everyone — even those who seem to sail through will have felt that slight nausea as they enter the exam room. For many students, this natural stress response is overwhelming and leads to fear and an inability to focus.

In physiological terms anxiety is a natural and adaptive response experienced by most animals to potential threat. The purpose of this feeling is to send adrenaline around the body and get ready to respond to the threat. This focuses the mind and body towards the situation.

As illustrated by the ‘deer in the headlights’, this response can also cause dysfunctional behaviours such as freezing, or distraction behaviours such as biting your nails, doodling, being consumed with housework. In animal terms this is known as stereotypy.
There are various reasons why some people have a functional or dysfunctional anxiety to exams. For example, personality factors of pessimism or worry; low self esteem and lack of confidence; previous negative performance on exams etc.

The 3 Ps

There is no cure for exam anxiety but you can try to feel more in control. The key to coping with exam anxiety is preparation, practice and peace (staying calm, but that doesn’t begin with ‘p’).

The more you have studied and feel you understand the material, the less stressful the assessment will be. There is a well-researched dichotomy between surface and deep learning — if all you have done is memorise the words on a page, then you feel less confident that you can remember those exact words on the day.

But if you have studied at a deeper level using essay and discussion questions then you have an internal sense that you know the topic, which puts you in control.

Practise, practise and practise

If you are someone who studies hard, but forgets everything during an exam then you need to practise being in that context as much as possible. Give yourself timed practice papers; practise in a classroom if you can. Have a friend mix up the questions and present them to you unseen.

Don’t study with music or the TV on (even if you think this helps you) as they won’t be there on the day, which will throw your brain off when trying to recall what you studied. All these small factors help make the overall situation familiar when you get to the exam hall, and the brain likes familiarity!

Finally, you can work on dealing with the physiological feelings using relaxation (peace) techniques — ask your student counsellor to help you or look online. Don’t worry about the time loss during the exam — a small amount of time at the start of the exam to feel calm will help your mind function more efficiently for the rest.

- The writer is a senior lecturer in psychology and campus coordinator of the psychology programme at Middlesex University Dubai.