Preparing for an exam is a tough time for even the most diligent students. It happens that the material learned by heart jumps out of my head from one type of ticket on the teacher's table. How to cope with exam anxiety, relieve stress? How to get into the category of lucky people who go to the session as if it were a holiday? Such questions are asked by students shortly before the session. Meanwhile, you need to prepare for the session from the beginning of the academic year. Analyze your behavior in lessons, exams, highlight the pros and cons. Some may need to be more confident, while others may need to be more modest.
Some tips to help you deal with exam anxiety
- Just before the exam, try not to wind yourself up.
- Do not ask those who have already passed how everything went if you feel that you are starting to worry even more from this. Step into the classroom with confidence. With all your appearance, show that you know everything. The point is not to impress the teacher, the point is that you set yourself up for success.
- After pulling out the ticket, put it aside and let yourself know that you are ready to answer the questions that are included in it. Calmly prepare your workplace: get a pen, a sheet of paper. Rewrite the first question, then the second. Habitual actions help to defuse the situation: nothing unusual happens, which means there is nothing to worry about.
The main rules for preparing for the exam
Distribute your power wisely. Take notes from your classmates for missed lectures. If some topics were “hard” during the semester, flip through the textbooks again. In the process of preparation, keep in mind that every person has his own biological rhythm. Each of us has a rise in strength, moods are replaced by a decline. The difference is in the interval, so one can tirelessly sit over textbooks for half a day, the other for two hours, and after 20 minutes someone is drawn to put the notes aside. In any case, your biorhythms can and should be used for good: during the period of energy upsurge - to teach, and when activity subsides - to repeat the past.
Avoid cramming. Mechanically memorized text tends to irrevocably disappear from memory during the exam. And to prevent this from happening, knowledge needs to be systematized. Studying the material on a particular examination question, try to remember the most important thing. This information will serve as a kind of beacon in the future. If you remember the key fact, formula, date, then something else from what you read on this topic will certainly come to mind. This approach gives a much greater effect than simple memorization. By the way, the teacher helps to arrange the beacons correctly during the consultation, so you should not skip them.
Pay attention to your diet, which should be complete and balanced. You can’t refuse dinner supposedly because you need to prepare. The feeling of hunger will not help to learn the material being studied well - rather the opposite. For the duration of the session, also forget about diets. After all, even the most gentle of them is stress for the body, and then there are exams. Double load! Avoid energy drinks. Their effectiveness may be high, but short-lived. Then invariably comes a decline in strength, which can be difficult to cope with.
Go in for sports. During the session, students mostly lead a sedentary lifestyle. However, doing exercises in the morning or going, for example, to the pool will not hurt. On the one hand, this will relieve tension, and on the other hand (experts have long established this) - the level of physical activity directly affects the state of mind.
Ways to develop your memory and attention
- When moving along the streets, try to remember, for example, the numbers of passing cars, house numbers.
- Write down on a piece of paper the names and surnames of the characters in your favorite movie, the actors who play them. Check how many mistakes you made.
- Learn by heart poems, lyrics, foreign words.
- When preparing new dishes, try to memorize recipes so that you can cook from memory next time without looking at the reference book
- Go on new walking routes, remembering not only the numbers of your home, but also the very architecture of the building.
There is another simple tip on how to reduce the psychological stress during the session. Don't live with exams alone, live with what comes after - holidays. Make plans, make appointments with friends. And even better - think about how you will come to study, rested, wiser, gained experience.
Pre-Exam Review Technique
- It is better to prepare for the exam together. You don't have to work together all the time. It is important to help each other, to explain difficult questions, to ask again.
- Write the main, important, key on a separate sheet. You can hang it above the table.
- Repeat material in large parts.
- Don't repeat if you don't understand. Only what you understand is remembered well.
- Remember to take breaks at work.
- Don't forget about sports.