Abinayaa Vigneswaran
Exam season can be one of the most stressful periods during a student’s time in education, even though stress can get you to realise its importance, high levels of stress can hinder a student’s ability to perform well in studies, lose concentration and affect mental health hence bringing awareness and understanding the impact and its best effective way to tackle stress.
So how does stress impact exam performance?
Stress can play a major physical role in not enabling your body and brain to carry out their function well when focusing and recalling information studied. Stress can release hormones such as cortisol, which causes memory problems, making it difficult to retain and recall information. This can also lead to a lack of concentration, making it difficult to focus and complete the examination to the best standards. Stress does not only emotionally impact younger pupils but also physically, for instance, too much stress can exponentially impact students’ mental health, causing depression and anxiety, leading to panic attacks, fatigue/unconsciousness, sleep deprivation, and weaker immunity.
How to manage excessive stress?
There are many ways we can avoid undue stress, starting from spreading out workloads and avoiding cramming. This can be achieved with a well-organised, realistic revision plan. Another important factor is regular breaks which ease the mind after long study sessions, avoid feeling overwhelmed and help absorb more information. Ensuring that your physical being is taken good care of by sleeping the recommended 7-9 hours does improve memory and concentration. As well as staying hydrated, eating well, regular exercise, and etrying out meditation can also help with the body and mind.
Reaching out for support is also highly recommended, whether that is in school, speaking to teachers, friends and family or seeking professional help with the GP, therapist or councillor can ease the stress and is one of the most effective ways.
Stress at these peak points of your educational or work life is natural but balancing it, staying organised and focused is in your hands to do the best you can in these important milestones. So what changes are you going to make?
Comment down below how you have been coping with stress?
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There are some really useful tips for managing stress here. I think that we should also look at the types of assessments and in particular the way they are structured. Perhaps ongoing assessment which is more spread out or allowing students to choose the type of assessment that plays to their strengths would reduce stress levels. From a societal perspective, exams are seen as the gold standard form of assessment and other forms of assessment perhaps less rigorous so that should also be addressed.
Thank you for your feedback, i do believe more awareness needs to be brought out by implementing more different techniques
This is really helpful! As someone who has struggled with exam stress, I think it’s really important to not let things build up! You usually end up rushing everything then 😭😭 A really useful method for studying as well is the pomodoro method!
Thank you, i am glad this was helpful, do share to students who are also in the same situation to bring awareness.That is also my favourite revision method too
Do you have any useful exam tips/revision strategies?
of course, active recall is a technique I personally implement in my revision, starting early is the way to go, do not leave revision last minute as build-up of too much stress needs to be avoided
This is helpful, exam season is usually really stressful i want to try incorporate these tips for my next semester exams
I’m glad, hoping your next exam goes better with this tips and tricks
Great article, very informative and well written!
Thank you! please share to other students who may need awareness of this topic
This is really helpful! I remember during finals, I was so stressed about getting top grades that I barely slept—and it actually made me perform worse. Finding balance is so important. This is a really thoughtful article and helps alot.
Everyone needs to read this, try advertising on TikTok, because as a student I know how many students would want to hear this!
I would love it if you include a students perspective also