Why is Exam Stress So Difficult to Manage?

posted on Apr 08, 2020

There are a hundred and one ways to deal with exam stress. Schools and parents do coach the students in stress management.

There are a hundred and one ways to deal with exam stress. Schools and parents do coach the students in stress management. However, whenever the exams arrive, stress seems to automatically accumulate around the children and they start passing their days in frantic ways, continuously worrying about their upcoming exams. The greater the stake, the higher the stress. And a few children lose their sleep over it thinking that their preparations are not enough. So, even with all that coaching, why is exam stress this difficult to manage? With all the positive advice flowing in, why do students still worry? Understanding the roots may pave the way for better stress management and that is the core intention of this post.

Procrastination starts piling the stress

Imagine a runner in a marathon. The athlete begins the race at a brisk speed, increases the speed slightly during the middle and masters all the adrenaline available towards the end. The longer the athlete waits to pick up speed, the faster he/she will have to run to reach the finish line first. The strategy may work for marathon runners but the stress that builds up towards the end does not help students sitting for exams. The top 10 schools in noida extension are critics of unplanned procrastination. Exam preparations cannot be left until the end with the hope that everything can be covered in one night. Students who are prone to procrastination and get stressed later should plan their preparations from day one so that every chapter is learned and revised by the time the exams arrive.

Peer pressure fuels it

It is human nature to compare ourselves with one another. This evolutionary wiring enables us to strive for greatness by setting someone else as the benchmark. Over the course of their schooling, students often suffer from peer pressure where comparisons start coming in areas of preparations, marks, overall performance and more. Now, peer pressure is not entirely negative. But it does build up stress when the student has chosen an incomparable advisory. An aspiring musician cannot compete with an aspiring scientist, neither a computer programmer with a biologist. If the competition is unfair, peer pressure fuels exam stress. And this becomes unmanageable for many students. Here, schools and parents can level the playing field by showing students that not all students present a fair competition.

Expectations turn stress into a vicious spiral

Our society has long placed undue expectations on the children. Schools have expected their students to perform to maintain the institutions’ standards and parents have wanted to fulfill their personal dreams through their children. Although the trend is now fortunately changing, students still pick up expectations from their surroundings and turn their exam stress into a vicious spiral. Today, many students connect success with the amount of money that they will be earning. High standards of foreign colleges also escalate their internal expectations. The thoughts are positive as long as they are fueling the students’ ambitions but anything more can become detrimental by building unnecessary stress. The best CBSE schools in Greater Noida, thus, always connect students’ passion with career. This helps to remove the external expectations factor.

Underestimation completes the loop

As the exams approach, students start to underestimate their preparations. The feeling lingers that whatever they have studied is still not enough. Performing students who strive to maintain their positions suffer from this stress-inducing phenomenon more as they fail to understand when the time has come to stop. Preparations then become a continuous affair. Students study day and night to play catch up with their own benchmarks. And the overworked mind readily goes into stress as it loses its capacity to logically analyse the exam situation. Excessive preparations right before the exam are never recommended. And this factor points to the procrastination point where starting early reaps fruits later. The top schools in Greater Noida West coach their students from the beginning of the session so that organisation becomes the greatest defender against exam stress.

With all that established, it is undeniable that some amount of stress is good. The mind stays critical and performs better. But keeping its growth unchecked can make stress a toxic emotion that shuts down the system in the exam hall. BGS Vijnatham believes that its responsibility for the students does not end with imparting the required lessons. The school also helps in effective preparations where students learn the subjects without losing their basic sanity. Stress can make education negatively overwhelming and cannot lead to proper learning. It is in the ethos of BGS to maintain learning as continuous and rigorous and that is how the school’s students tackle their exams as well.