How to cope with exam stress

Hi everyone, I’m Robyn from EasyA. I’m currently doing my postgrad in International Business at the University of Liverpool and I want to share with you some tips on how to cope with exam anxiety all year-round. As I’m sure many of you know, exam season can be very stressful and is often seen as a time for students to panic and overwhelm themselves with school work, or sometimes even just put off studying to the last minute and start procrastinating.

Tip 1: Start studying early

You may be thinking ‘but what if it’s too early?’ or ‘no, I’ve got loads of time to study’. This is exactly what I thought when I started my A-Levels. I had received advice that I should start revising pretty much at the start of the academic year. Needless to say, I didn’t like the idea so I didn’t do it. But you never know just how much revision you need to do, or how many times you’ll need to go over it to understand it. I didn’t leave studying to the last minute, but any extra time you can make to start as early as you can will always be valuable and take a lot of stress off exam season. This will also help combat that blasted last-minute cram for exams! You can still enjoy down time, just take 30 minutes each evening to go over your school lessons and as you get closer to sitting the exams, take more time to revise how you find it best to.

Tip 2: Do something that you love

If you overwhelm yourself with studying and the feelings of panic and stress, you are likely to not be able to get anything done because you’re so focused on the negatives of exam season. Remember to make time to do something for yourself to recharge. Set a timer in the breaks you have between studying to do something that relaxes you. Sit in your garden, take your dog for a short walk, read a few pages of that new book you just bought. By the time the timer goes off and you need to get back to studying, you will have a much calmer mindset and may be able to see the answer to the question you are studying from a different angle.

Tip 3: Find an outlet for studying frustrations

I think I speak for a lot of students when I say we can quite easily become very frustrated when studying for exams. If you don’t understand a question and have nobody around who can help you, you may be very likely to just skip that question altogether and leave not understanding how to complete it. If you come across a question like this and can feel yourself getting annoyed, try finding a way to work off that feeling. Many people will go out running, or even find a sport they can use to help relieve that stress, and just like I mentioned in the previous step, you may be able to approach that difficult question from a different angle after looking it over again.

Tip 4: Create a revision timetable

A great way to minimize exam stress and anxiety is to create a schedule that helps you keep organized. Divide your day up into multiple sections and prioritise the subjects that have the exams with the closest dates. If you can break down the revision into chunks over each day, it won’t look like such a monumental task to study. This way, you can approach it with a calmer mindset. Make sure you tick off what you have done each day - this will help you feel like you have been productive (which, in my opinion, is an amazing feeling!). Remember not to overwhelm yourself with unrealistic expectations though. Find a reasonable amount of subjects to revise effectively each day and don’t add to it, otherwise you may put too much pressure on yourself and lose motivation again.

Tip 5: If you are struggling, talk to someone

This is probably the most important piece of advice to give to a student. Often, we can feel like we’ve reached the point of burn out and find it very difficult to stay motivated. We may ultimately feel like giving up and think ‘there’s no point in me doing revision, I’m just going to fail anyway’. I’ve felt this before and it’s very disheartening. But there are people out there who have the ability to help you. Reach out to your teachers, the school nurse, or even a family member. I guarantee that they will understand how you feel. Nobody who has gone all the way through education has finished it without sitting at least one exam, so they will either be able to advise you directly or point you to someone with the skills and knowledge to help.

If you have any other tips on how to cope with exam stress and anxiety, please do share them with your fellow students. Let’s create a community of caring individuals and help each other learn how to de-stress in difficult times.

Don’t forget to check out our other blog posts while you're here. We also have another blog about student mindfulness, so do give that a read when you can!

Additional advice on specific maths questions can be found on the EasyA mobile app, so if you’re in need of one-to-one tutoring, you can download it here!

Good luck!