This simple tip can help you kick your pre-exam nerves and anxiety to the curb...
There are few feelings worse than the impending dread felt before an exam; the feeling that you should be more prepared and that everything you've been working towards for the last however-many-years is all dependent on the next hour and a half of tense silence going incredibly well.
Obviously this stress and anxiety can have a very negative impact on the outcome of an exam and, ironically, this prospect just adds to the stress and anxiety felt beforehand.
It’s an easy cycle to fall in to, but a very simple tip from Professor Michael Scullin, Director of Sleep Neuroscience and Cognitive Laboratory at Baylor University in the US, could help you escape it.
So, what exactly is this magical anxiety-busting tip?
Well, as promised, it's super-simple.
All you need to do is spend five minutes before your exam writing down all your exam-related anxieties.
It might sound too good to be true, but according to Professor Scullin, it really works. In fact, when the technique was tested on a group of Biology students, they were found to perform, on average, half-a-grade better than their peers (so instead of getting a B- they got a B+).
Talking about the study on Radio 4's All in the Mind, Professor Scullin explained: "In the five or 10 minutes before the exam, half of the students got to write down everything that they were anxious about – all of their test anxieties – and in the other control group they didn’t write down anything.
"And what was interesting, is if you looked at this students’ writing quality, they start out saying, ‘oh my gosh, I’m going to fail this exam, I’m so nervous, I’m so stressed.’ And then as you got down the page you saw people’s writing change, it went to, ‘you know what, I have been preparing, I’ve been studying for a few days for this. And even if it doesn’t go well, even if I end up not passing or a get a lower grade than I expect, it’s not gonna be the end of the world – my parent’s aren’t gonna disown me, my girlfriend’s not going to break up with me. It’s all going to be OK.'
"So you kinda see that change in psychological processing by the end, where now, people are going into the exams and they’re not quite so worried."
In fact, Professor Scullin is so convinced that the technique works, he includes it as a precursor to all exams in his classes.
We reckon it's worth a shot.
