Examinophobia: The Fear of Exams- It’s Not Real

The exam dates have been declared. You have studied all the topics. You have practised well. You are confident of getting a high score. Admission into that reputed college is a certainty.

Yet, on the day of the exam, your hands are sweaty. Your heart is pounding like a hammer on an anvil. The invigilator appears blurred. You don’t realize when she gave you the paper. She shouts you out of your reverie. You start writing your name. But you forget to leave a box blank between your first name and surname. You freak out, and make further mistakes. You darken the wrong oval. You name starts with ‘K’ but you darken ‘J’ as you cannot think straight. You sign for on the space for the invigilator. Whatever can go wrong, goes wrong.

But take heart. Even a genius like Albert Einstein had it. A brave man like Winston Churchill only managed to write his name when he was appearing for an entrance exam.

Ok now that you know that you are in league with the geniuses, how do you go about tackling them? Here are some steps. They are not so hard and fast. But no harm trying, is it?

Here are a few things you may do during an exam:

- Take deep breaths.

- If a question causes you to freeze, move on to an easier question. Come back to the difficult question later.

- Avoid talking to friends who get stressed easily. You know the ones with cue cards outside of the exam hall, frantically trying to remember key dates and equations. They will but raise your stress levels.

- Ask you parents to go easy on you. That’s easier said than done. Have a teacher talk with them.

- Ignore high expectations from others.

- Stop thinking about doing better than others. That will only raise your stress levels.

Before an exam

- Pick your best time to study. There are no hard and fast rules.

- Get enough sleep

- Practice previous year’s question papers.

- Try explaining tricky answers to someone else to make sure you have understood it.

- Always ask for help if there are things you don’t understand, and especially if you are feeling, stressed out.

- Watch a film, a TV show, play cricket or listen to some music that makes you feel good.

- Drink some herbal tea or a hot chocolate. It’s a well-known fact that hot drinks are known to soothe the soul (avoid too much caffeine though!).

- A shower or a bath can help relieve stress.

After an exam

- Avoid the exam “post-mortem”. You don’t need to know how other people fared in the exam.

- Think only of the exam that is coming next.

While these steps may not altogether make you an exam pro, they do help and giving them a try will harm no one. So gear up and ace that test in spite of all the stress.