Today’s blog post is a TED TALK that can help you study better and reduce your exam anxiety in less than 2 minutes… Check it out!
Tag Archive for 'Exam Stress'
Exam Stress Got You Down?
The best way to achieve mastery is to practice, but you need to practice within the right context and environment.
Spending 1 to 2 hours on a problem the week before an exam that only allows you 20 to 30 minutes to solve it won’t help your exam related stress – in fact it will most probably INCREASE IT!
I know it’s hard to do, but you need to START your preparation much sooner than you think. What I suggest is that within a week of starting a course, you determine the exam content. I’m totally serious.
With the full content of the final exam (you can ask for copies of previous exams – usually available at the library or online), you will know what you know and what you need to learn.
One thing is for sure – you’ll be a lot less stressed if you do this than if you don’t.
Exam stress is mostly due to uncertainty – the “not knowing” what’s going to be on the exam rather than the difficulty associated with the questions.
Once you’ve figured that out, you can easily deal with it.
Otherwise you’ll continue to be best friends with DREAD and that’s no fun is it?
If you dread exams, you’re not alone. I don’t know anyone who likes exams, but there are people who get very anxious and dread midterms and finals.
Chances are, you dread exams because you’re not prepared – or more likely you don’t “feel” like you’re sufficiently or adequately prepared.
We’ve all been there at some point – taking an exam knowing we didn’t study enough. We’ve also all been sitting there thinking “I am going to ace this exam!”
The challenge we all have as students is to be able to gauge how much preparation is enough. In my study book – Get The Best Grades With The Least Amount Of Effort, I explain several tips on how to learn HOW you learn.
When you acquire that skill, you can quickly and easily apply it to exam preparation and then exam execution.
Preparing for an exam is NOT the same as taking an exam. In my study book, I highlight exam taking strategies that can relieve a lot of the anxiety and stress you might have.
Today’s post is a funny diagram that begs the question “How should you study for exams?” In my study book, I explain this in Chapter 8 How to determine what will be on your next exam and Chapter 9 How to ace exams each and every time. Click on the hyperlinks to get your copy of my study book now, otherwise this chart will unfortunately continue to represent the stress of taking exams.
How Not To Study For Exams
This was sent to me by Andrew Powell in Montreal, Canada. If you come across diagrams, charts or illustrations like these – please send them to me and I’ll make sure everyone knows you sent it to me. Don’t forget that my study book has been sold to thousands of students from all over the world representing 29 different countries!
Sometimes it seems like some people are just naturally smart. It seems like they get good grades while they are playing more than actually studying.
You probably think that their good grades come easily without studying or without any hard work involved, right?
I tried all kinds of tricks to improve my grades– studying at different times of the day, in different places, by different schedules. Each one made a difference.
I wasted countless hours doing things that didn’t work. My frustration and anger at not being taught how to study drove me to systematizing the process so that success was repeatable and, more importantly, efficient. Even though I love reading and learning, I hate to waste time – especially if I know I can read and learn more quickly.
Being perpetually curious, I started to look into just how my classmates were getting such astonishingly high grades when they seemed to spend all their time goofing off rather than studying.
Since some of my friends were among these straight A students, I asked them outright, and this is some of what they said:
- “We need to create adequate space in our lives for leisure and enjoyment. The human mind truly expands when engaged in an enjoyable experience, and understand what we study.”
- “Since life is more than constant studying, we’ve begun to tend towards laziness instead, so you have to figure out how to note the most important points and develop a way to remember them by association with something that you really relate to during the learning process, this will have what you learn “stick” in your mind, along with the pleasant and relaxing experience you have at that time.”
- “Split up the lessons into small focused ones so that you chunk stuff down. What this accomplishes is an improvement of your focus while increasing your memory recall.”
Anthony Robbins calls it “Mirroring the Masters”.
That’s what I started to do.
One step at a time, I created a SYSTEM that was repeatable – it became my book with the name that says it all – Get The Best Grades With The Least Amount Of Effort.
I decided that I wanted to get that kind of free time as well. I had been wasting whole weekends reviewing for exams, when with what I ultimately learned I would have been able to do better with only two or three hours of study!
Yeah I know it sounds too good to be true – but y’know what? I got to the point where I was fed up with non-stop pressure and hour after hour of sitting at my desk trying to learn everything JUST TO GET BY.
I had enough and decided to see if this ‘stuff really did work’.
Y’know what?!?!
It did and it does – but only for those who learn the techniques, tools and strategies.
I eventually developed tips and tricks to help my friends and classmates ( the first draft of my book) and believe it or not, I was met with resistance. I hadn’t “proven” myself and because of that, I didn’t have the credibility. It was often too late for me to help those who needed it the most.
That has changed now. BUT it’s too late for my classmates of 20+ years ago…
I have accomplished things that are “public” or within people’s view and I now have credibility.
I am living proof that these strategies work.
I also have an amazing number of success stories from students all over the globe who have put my advice to good use, and more of them are doing so every day. I’d love to count you among the successes I’ve chronicled in seminars and books!
Let me know by posting a comment on this blog!
I genuinely think that just about anyone can learn these fundamental principles and use them to improve their grades immensely– possibly from Ds all the way up to Bs and sometimes As– something many people only dream of.
But nothing happens unless you change something.
Make the decision now to stop wasting time studying and start to get better grades THIS SEMESTER.
Onward and upward!
Dr Marc Dussault
P.S.
When you flunk your next exam, test or quiz, come back to this blog and read the posts – there is enough content here to prevent that from happening again. My book has much more content than this blog and it’s the best investment you could make – it’s a fraction of the cost of an academic textbook, the price of a double music CD… Think about that for a second.
If you didn’t flunk, but you got stressed out of your mind – consider the option that you could get the SAME GRADES OR BETTER without the stress. Why put yourself through that?
For me, the STRESS and ANXIETY was the key driver to learning these strategies – I always get ‘pumped up’ for exams and quizzes, but more than that is no fun – I want the calm sense of confidence that I KNOW I can ACE an EXAM.
That total feeling of serenity is priceless ESPECIALLY when everyone else is fidgeting, twitching and sometimes getting sick in the bathroom before a final. That’s just not for me.
