How to successfully prepare for exams while also staying calm under pressure. What often undermines many students can also be your greatest strength if you follow these rules.
The examination phase means hectic in almost all cases. rush and stress. And this combination kills your success. Yes: A little pressure and adrenaline boost your performance and ensure that you can deliver your best performance. But too much of it blocks you and is far from helpful.
Some negative consequences of this are:
- Your ability to concentrate while preparing for the exam is steadily decreasing
- Your study units become unproductive
- Your high expectations destroy your motivation
- Your environment reacts negatively to your imbalance
- Your health suffers and drags down your performance
I can think of at least 20 other negative consequences spontaneously – but what I want to show you is clear: If you are under too much pressure to perform and are a master at driving yourself mentally crazy, you are damaging yourself. So always remember the most important rule.
Stay Calm!
It’s just two little words – but they pack a punch. You decide about success or failure. They make you a straight-A student or a shaky candidate. If you manage to stay calm under pressure, you can reach your full potential; if you don’t succeed, you always remain below your potential – no matter how much you have learned beforehand. Let’s now look at why this is so.
Why This Simple Rule Is So Important
If you can stay calm in stressful situations and don’t lose yourself in any rash acts, you make your life easier. Anyone who stays cool under the greatest pressure, organizes their thoughts and THEN acts, avoids annoying careless mistakes, and can fully exploit their skills.
If, on the other hand, you lose your calm, you will destroy everything that you have previously built up with painstakingly detailed work. When you’re under a lot of stress, you can’t think of the simplest things; dead easy routine tasks seem like unsolvable puzzles.
I have three concrete examples for you.
Example 1: While Studying
If you lose your calm and become hectic while preparing for the exam, you will torpedo your learning progress. It’s no use rushing through your study materials at your desk because you don’t have much time to study, or you haven’t yet understood every detail of a topic.
Better: keep calm. Create a rough study plan, divide up your remaining time and work your way through the material calmly and rationally. If you don’t have much time, then so be it. Find out the most important topics for your exam and focus on this content as you study. You can’t do everything. So do at least the most important thing – but do it right.
And if you would need help with the other written assignments you could delegate some to a paper writer.
Example 2: Just Before The Exam
Immediately before the exam, many students go completely crazy. They read their summary up to the last moment or nervously discuss alternative solutions to task 4 with their fellow students. But this behavior is completely counterproductive just before an exam situation. You must concentrate on your strengths and not waste them on confusing little things.
Better: keep calm. Go through the most important contents of the module in your mind. Feel free to take a last look at your learning materials – but don’t question them anymore. It’s too late for that anyway. Don’t talk to your fellow students about the upcoming exam. You can now take care of yourself and your performance. Not about others.
Example 3: During The Exam
As soon as the exam questions are handed out, many students blow a fuse. They immediately start leafing through the pages frantically, start writing without thinking, and are no longer aware of their surroundings. But it is precise because of this behavior that they overlook important information in the task, make careless mistakes or misjudge the processing time.
Better: keep calm. Look carefully at the exam and read through each task in detail. Take notes and mark important passages, but first get an overview. Which tasks bring a lot of points? Which questions could you answer spontaneously? Which parts are rather heavy or complex? It is not the students who start fastest who get the best grades, but those who manage the exams best. Don’t be slow, but be smart and keep calm.
Conclusion
If you want to complete a successful exam phase, your motto from today is: stay calm. Even if it is difficult for you and will cost you some practice and effort, this rule is perhaps the most important key to more happiness and satisfaction in your studies.
Especially if you get nervous quickly and let yourself be surprised by self-doubt, it is worth practicing staying calm and constantly reminding yourself of the advantages of this simple basic rule.
