For the vast majority of people, exams are unpleasant experiences. Some find them more unpleasant than others, but it’s rare to find anyone who actually enjoys and looks forward to them. Why don’t we like exams? Well, if you want to pass them then you’re probably going to have to study for them, and again, most people would rather do something else. But another major reason why people don’t like exams is that they get anxious.
A little anxiety is fine. It helps to motivate you and inclines you to do some studying. But often the anxiety can be much worse than this, and can actually interfere with your studying (e.g. you are too stressed out to sit and read). This anxiety is not fine.
Why do some people tend to get so anxious about exams whilst others seem pretty laid back about it all? Well there’s probably a bit of fakery going on (after all, it’s cool to look relaxed whilst everyone else is freaking out), and some people may genuinely not care if they do well or not. Finally, I suppose there’s always a few who’ve studied all day every day for the preceding year so that they’re pretty sure they’re going to do well. But what about the rest of us who make up the majority? We’ve studied quite hard (or even very hard!) and yet we’re still really anxious. What’s going on?
What seems to be going on is that anxious people are making greater demands on themselves than their more relaxed counterparts. That is to say, anxious people are going around with a demand or rule in their heads that says something like “I must not fail this exam”. They are likely also to have a rule that says “If I fail this exam then it’s awful (or terrible)”, and another like “I couldn’t handle it if I failed this exam”. Finally, they’re got the rule “If I fail this exam then I’m a failure”.
Anxious people are not necessarily conscious of these demands and rules – in fact, it’d be surprising if they were – but they’re there none the less. And what is the result of such demands and rules? Anxiety. How can you not get anxious before an exam if you believe that you absolutely must not fail? After all, even the best prepared person always has some chance of failure, don’t they? But with this rule, you’re just simply not allowed to fail and that’s it. And if you do fail, well then it’s absolutely awful, terrible, the worst thing ever. There’s no way you could handle such a failure, your whole life is ruined and you are a useless waste of space. Now that’s pressure.
Putting yourself under so much pressure makes you extremely anxious and is counterproductive. After all, if you’re very anxious it’s hard to think clearly (or even sleep and eat normally) – all your hard work can go to waste. So how do you begin to feel less anxious? By taking some of the pressure of yourself.
You can start by looking at those demands and rules that you are probably carrying around with you – the ones that say you must not fail etc. Are you sure they’re sensible? Do they even make sense?
Let’s look at the first rule – “I must not fail this exam”. It might seem fine at first glance, but look closer. “I must…” Don’t you really mean “I don’t want to fail this exam”? Or even “I really, really, really don’t want to fail this exam”? That seems closer to the truth, doesn’t it? After all, there isn’t actually anything preventing you from failing the exam is there? It’s not like saying “I must fall if I jump off a building” – there’s universal laws for that sort of thing which have to be obeyed. If someone offered you a million pounds to fail the exam, you could probably manage it. So the rule “I must not fail this exam” doesn’t make real sense.
How about the rule “If I failed this exam it’d be awful”? Again it seems plausible at first glance – I suppose it depends on what you take the word “awful” to mean. If you believe it means “terrible”, or “worse thing ever”, then the rule starts to look shaky. Yes, failing an important exam is a bad thing, but it’s not limitlessly bad, is it? There are worse things that can happen – take your pick of any number of diseases, accidents, bereavements, etc. It’s not hard to think of something much worse than failing even the most important exam (would you swap the lives of your family for entrance to medical school?). So this rule is dodgy as well.
Next up is “I couldn’t handle it if I failed”. Hmm. So what happens when you can’t handle things? Do you die? Do you spend the rest of your life in misery? Do these sound like things that are likely to happen if you fail an exam? Probably not. What you are likely to mean is that “I’d find it difficult to handle it if I failed”. Could you handle it if your family’s lives depended on it? Yes. You’d be disappointed but you’d handle it. There are always other options.
Finally we come to the rule “If I fail this exam then I’m a failure”. Now this does make sense, but only as long as you acknowledge the limits of your failure to that particular exam. “I’m a failure” is far too global a term to stick on yourself. Saying that “I’m a failure” implies that you fail at everything you do – in the past and future, as well as in the present. And not just in exams, but in other areas of life as well. Seeing as this isn’t plausible, what you surely mean something along the lines of “I’m a fallible human being who can fail an exam. This does not mean I’m a failure”.
So it seems that when we take a closer look at the underlying demands and rules that cause us to be overly-anxious about exams, we see that they’re pretty nonsensical and unhelpful. What’s a better way to view exams? Well it’s pretty much the opposite of the beliefs that cause anxiety. For instance, how about:
“I really don’t want to fail this exam, but there’s no universal law that means that I can’t. If I do happen to fail this exam, it’d be a bad thing but not terrible. If I do fail this exam, it’d be hard for me to handle but I could handle it. And failing this exam does not make me a “failure”, just a fallible human being who can fail an exam”.
Can you imagine how you’d feel if this was your philosophy about exams? I think you’d feel a lot less pressure and feel a lot less anxious as a result, freeing you up to perform better.
I hope this has been of some help for any of you who are facing exams in the near future. I empathise – I’ve always hated them myself, but at least I don’t get so anxious about them anymore!