3 Ways on How to Deal with Exam Stress (Without Losing Your Mind)

You know the feeling of your heart skipping a beat when you see a new exam posted? Yeah, me too. With schools ending in more or less a month, the summer breeze kicking in, and birds chirping in the morning, comes final semester exams. Though it's the final push to earn your well deserved summer break, it seems like a big, heavy, and nearly impossible one to get through with all the deadlines due. You probably need a break and think that your mental health has already had enough so before pulling all-nighters for a week straight, try out these tips.

1. Break Your Cycle of Overthinking

   Overthinking is unfortunately one of the most common resort we fall to when we see a new deadline made. "How will I finish on time?", "I'm going to fail", and "What if I forget everything" are all probably common phrases that you've thought before, in fact, maybe even a couple million times. Instead of trying to put up with these thoughts and spirals, I want you to try one thing. Pause. Breathe. Repeat.

   As simple as a three word instruction may seem, I know it isn't easy to cancel out all the whispers going on in your mind. All of those thoughts aren't anything you can control. So think of something you can control whether it's revising a topic, or taking a small snack break.

2. Study Smarter, Not longer

   No, studying for 5 hours straight without any break is not good for you! In fact, I think its quite oblivious that this is indeed not healthy for your mental health. Even just an hour of focused studying will put you in a better place than 5 hours of reading off a presentation with your mind wandering around. A recommended study method that's actually mental health friendly is The Pomodoro method, there are only 5 steps to follow. Get your study material, set your timer for 25 minutes, when your timer is up, mark off one pomodoro, take a 5 minute break, repeat this four times to have 4 pomodoro's in total.

   "You stop worrying about the endless list of tasks and start focusing on what you can achieve now" (Scroggs, The Pomodoro Technique)

3. Rest

   Your brain needs rest to go on, not caffeine. Studying until 3am is not something to be proud of. It's necessary for your brain to get proper rest, especially if you have an exam the next day. Instead of overthinking and cramming, go to bed. And don't fool yourself, staying up late studying for an exam is just as bad as staying up late on a device. The truth is, studies show that your brain isn't strong at remembering the topics you studied at 2am. For instance, whenever I have an exam the next day, I make sure that I'm in bed by 10:30pm, ready to thrive on my exams the next day.

In conclusion, do your exams matter? Yes, but your mental health is what matters much more. Your end goal shouldn't be to not care or not stress about your exams at all, but to be ale to manage your anxiety in the healthiest and safest way possible. So always remember to take a deep breath at to trust yourself.

Goodluck!