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Managing Exam Stress

This guest post was written by Adrian Kakinda (ASC tutor and PhD Candidate in Psychology)

Exams feel like climbing a mountain. The peak looks impossible, the path feels endless, and your legs wobble at the thought of another step. The trick isn’t to avoid the mountain. It’s to climb it with purpose, one step at a time, armed with the right tools.

Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Think about that during exams. Whether you ace them or struggle, the key is how you move forward. Exams are part of the journey, not the destination. What matters isn’t how perfect your climb is but how determined you are to reach the summit.

Before the Exam

Climbing a mountain without preparation is a recipe for disaster. The same goes for exams. Fortunately, there are many straightforward things you can do now to get ready for exams and stay healthy during the process.

  • Start by organizing your space. A cluttered desk equals a cluttered mind. Make your study area neat and distraction-free. Keep only the materials you need within reach and let the rest wait.
  • Set a stress boundary. Give yourself a worry window. Set aside 10 minutes a day to think about what’s stressing you. When the time is up, close that mental box. The rest of the day is for action, not anxiety.
  • Start with a plan. Imagine building a puzzle. You don’t randomly pick pieces; you sort them first. Break your material into smaller chunks. Assign topics to specific days and stick to that schedule.
  • Use the Pomodoro Technique. Picture your brain as a sprinter, not a marathon runner. Study for 25 minutes, rest for 5, and repeat. These focused bursts keep your mind sharp and energized.
  • Visualize the exam day. See yourself walking into the room, calm and confident. Picture yourself answering questions smoothly and finishing with time to spare. Athletes rehearse their performance in their minds before stepping onto the field. You can do the same.
  • Sleep is your secret weapon. Without it, you’re like a car running on fumes. Research shows that students who sleep seven to eight hours perform better on tests.

Think about Marcus Aurelius’ wisdom: “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” Worrying about exams doesn’t change the outcome. Preparing for them does.

During the Exam

Today is the day! Are you still stressed? If so, that’s completely natural. It’s normal to feel anxious in high-stakes situations like exams. In fact, a moderate level of stress can actually improve your exam performance.

Of course, too much stress makes it difficult to actually write the exam. If you’re feeling so anxious it’s hard to think, there are all sorts of strategies you can use in the exam itself to help yourself feel calmer.

First, breathe. Deep, steady breaths tell your brain, “We’ve got this.” Try this: inhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds, and exhale for four seconds. Think of it as hitting the pause button on panic mode and rebooting into focus mode.

Stress Buster 1: The “Palm Press.” Press your palms together firmly and hold for 10 seconds. Release slowly. This small action grounds your body and gives your brain something else to focus on.

Start with what you know. Small wins build confidence and give you momentum, so begin with the easiest parts. If a question feels overwhelming, skip it and come back later when your mind is clearer.

If your mind goes blank, don’t panic. Just write down anything—keywords, formulas, phrases—even if it feels incomplete. Fragments can lead to ideas.

Stress Buster 2: The “Tense and Release.” Sit up straight, clench your fists and tense your shoulders. Hold for five seconds, then release completely. It’s like shedding a weight you didn’t realize you were carrying.

Don’t let the clock intimidate you. It’s useful to check the time every once in awhile, to make sure you’re making good progress, but don’t obsess over it. Just answer the questions you can easily answer, then go back to the trickier ones.

Theodore Roosevelt said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” That’s your motto during the exam. No one expects a flawless performance. What matters is showing up and giving it your best.

After the Exam

The exam is done. Now it’s time to step back and reflect.

Let go of what you can’t change. Obsessing over answers won’t alter them. Instead, ask yourself what worked in your preparation and what didn’t.

Celebrate small victories. Did you answer every question? That’s a win. Remember the tricky formula you studied? Another win. Are you still breathing? Another win.

Seek feedback. Ask your lecturer or compare notes with classmates to learn from the experience. Fear of constructive criticism holds many students back. Growth happens when you face it.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.” Take that wisdom to heart as you prepare for the next challenge.

Questions for Reflection

  1. What specific actions can you take today to focus on what you control, rather than worrying about what you don’t?
  2. Are your current study habits setting you up for success, or creating unnecessary obstacles?
  3. When stress creeps in during exams, how do you respond, and how does it affect your performance?
  4. If you could change one thing about how you prepare for exams, what would it be, and why haven’t you done it yet?
  5. How does your mindset shape the way you approach challenges like exams, and what does that reveal about your overall approach to life?
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Reading for Revision: The SQ3R Method

This guest post was written by Dr Conner McAleese (ASC Tutor and PhD English)

For most subjects, exam revision will involve reading. This could include re-reading your own lecture notes as well as engaging with new secondary sources. Simply reading notes or papers, however, can easily become a passive form of revision that only wastes time and doesn’t help you learn. To make your revision more active, a structure like the SQ3R method will help you critically engage with your reading and thoroughly engage with your sources.

While the SQ3R Method is intended as a note taking method, it also introduces a valuable set of skills that can help with reading your own notes, and, equally as importantly, engaging with secondary material during exam revision. It can seem quite complicated at first, but with practice it will become much easier to build into your exam (and overall study!) routines.

A TOP TIP throughout using the SQ3R method is to constantly refer back to the author in your thinking! Hurdy McGurdy says… Alanis Morrisette says… This will help build the author’s name into your understanding of the secondary source which is a nice touch for including within your exam!

The SQ3R method consists of five stages: Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Survey

Survey means exactly what it says on the tin – survey the landscape of your source. This means taking note of a few things before you even begin to read. For instance, is this a book chapter? A monograph? A journal article? Each of these sources will come with a different set of challenges to reading them.

Your next step is to survey your source’s structure. What are its headings? Subheadings? Does the source contain figures? Tables? Pictures? The most important aspect of structure for the SQ3R method is to see if your source contains any summaries (such as an abstract at the start). If it does, this may help guide your reading as you can cherry pick which sections you feel would be best for you.

This leads to the last aspect of surveying a text – why are you reading it? How does this source connect to your wider study plan? You can consider what arguments the author makes and whether or not you agree with them.

Remember: While you won’t know what exam questions will come up, you can (and should!) build arguments in your head around your subject’s topic matter. This can aid with memorisation of the materials themselves.

Question

Once you have surveyed your secondary source, it’s time to interrogate it. Be critical here. Before you begin reading, ask yourself some questions about the source. What does it mean by this subheading? Why does it choose to include this section at all? Hopefully, all your questions will be answered as your read your text. If not, then that is a question you could try and answer yourself (is the source incomplete?).

TOP TIP: If your school and/or discipline provides past examples of exams, it’s helpful to use those questions to guide your reading. You can also create your own practice questions by using the source itself. Take a look at the big ideas outlined in the abstract or introduction and draft some questions based on the question the source itself is trying to answer.

Read

By this point, it’s time to start reading! The key thing, though, is that the survey and question stages mean you know how the source is structured, so you may not have to read the whole thing. For instance, if your survey identified subheadings which aren’t relevant to your specific module exam (remember: the scholar has not written their text to align with the module’s Intended Learning Outcomes!), you can just ignore those sections.

When reading the sections you do think will be of value, keep your questions in mind. You may have drawn up questions for specific subheadings during the Question phase of this method – use them. As you read, try and find the answer to those questions. This will trick your brain into retaining more information! Work smarter, not harder.

A TOP TIP for this step is to make sure to read actively and critically. You should use methods like note-taking and annotation to keep you focussed, and be sure to ask questions (and answer your original questions!) as you go.

Recite

In this step, you write the answers to the questions you asked in step two in your own words. Once your reading stage is complete, immediately write down the answers to the questions you set yourself. You can do this after each subheading if you wish! When constructing your answers to your questions, try and make them accessible to someone who is not familiar with your subject area. A great way to tell if you truly know something is to try to explain something to a non-expert (perhaps a family member or friend). The more simply you can explain it (and it still makes sense!), the better you understand the material.

If you’re reading a secondary source for this method, it would be worth adding to the notes you have already taken for your classes for this subject. In a similar way to your note-taking style for lectures and seminars, now write concise summaries of what you have read and learned. And keep using the author’s name at this stage, too! This makes the next stage of the method much easier to complete.

Review

This stage is crucial. Now is the time to see how much you have learned!

So, return to your questions. Read your questions aloud and see if you can answer your questions effectively without re-reading your summaries. If you cannot answer those questions straight away – do not panic! It is not expected that you should be able to do this perfectly on your first attempt.

Once you feel confident that you can answer each of your questions without looking at your notes, try and summarise the author’s main points without looking at anything you’ve written. This is key, especially if your exam is closed book! Remember the tip above about including the author’s name in your questions and reciting? Continue doing so. Hopefully, after a few run throughs of these steps, you will be able to describe, explain, and summarise McGurdy’s and Morissette’s arguments with ease!

Conclusion

A really important part of this process is to be self-reflective. Do not ignore any gaps in your knowledge as you go along. Honesty, especially with yourself, is important during any exam revision period. If you don’t know something, say so! Acknowledging what you don’t yet know will help reframe your mind so that you can fill those gaps in your knowledge before the exam begins.

If you want to take your learning further, you can build on what you’ve done here by using the SPE Method, too!

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Reading for Revision: The SPE Method

This guest post was written by Dr Conner McAleese (ASC Tutor and PhD English)

For most subjects, exam revision will involve reading. This could include re-reading your own lecture notes as well as engaging with new secondary sources. Simply reading notes or papers, however, can easily become a passive form of revision that only wastes time and doesn’t help you learn. To make your revision more active, a structure like the SPE method will help you critically engage with your reading and thoroughly engage with your sources.

This method can either be used in conjunction with the SQ3R Method, or it can be used on its own. This method allows for a flexibility if you have to read a large number of sources in advance of your exam. It’s also a good way to quickly see if a source will be useful before you give it a more thorough reading.

Structure

First, take a wander through the source’s structure. Review the contents page for potential chapters of interest, or scan the abstract for an idea of the source’s argument and how it’s structured. Then, consider what the source’s headings and subheadings are throughout the text and note if the source includes any tables, figures or other visual representations of the information. In understanding the structure of the source you are using, you are prepping your mind to engage with it!

Proposition

This stage is critical for making your source work for you. No author will be familiar with the structure of your module and how your module lead has chosen to lay their material out for you to learn. During the proposition stage, you can read through those portions of the text you believe are relevant to your exam and then collate them in an order that makes sense for you. If you are using the SQ3R Method in conjunction with the SPE Method, then you can do this during either the Recite or Review stages of that method. Summarise the author’s arguments for each section you have read and organise them in a way that makes sense for your learning!

Evaluation

When evaluating a source, don’t be afraid of being harsh. The author will never know, so you won’t hurt their feelings! Do the author’s subheadings truly answer their argument? If not, why not? If they do, how successfully is this done? Be reflective on how you would approach answering the lines of argument the author has introduced and evaluate if this is more, less, or equally as successful as the author themselves. This is step is about retaining information, and this step can help solidify the source as a whole in your mind.

Conclusion

While simpler than the SQ3R Method of reading, the SPE Method can let you review a much larger volume of sources and help you construct wider arguments that engage with the academic discourses around your essay questions more broadly. Depending on your subject, this more straightforward approach to reading might be exactly what you need to prepare for your exams.

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How to Make Revision More Fun

This guest post was written by Clara Seyfried (ASC Tutor, and PhD Candidate in Psychology)

As the end of the semester approaches and exams are loom, fun might be the last thing we associate with revision. However, even if studying doesn’t become your new favourite hobby, enjoying yourself more while revising will ultimately make you more engaged, which can make it easier for you to study more and absorb information more effectively.

In this post, we’ll discuss some tips and tricks for how you can approach revision from the right angle, and perhaps even learn to like it.

Take Care of Yourself: Exams Don’t Define You

Exams can feel like a lot of pressure. If you are afraid of exams and worried about not being able to put enough work into your revision, it can be useful to think about what you can realistically expect to get out of your exams and set goals which you think you will be able to achieve. Depending on your experience with exams so far, it might also help to relativise success and failure in the exam context. What could success look like for you? And what is the worst possible thing that could happen as a result of your performance in this exam? Exams are designed to assess your knowledge and skills, not you as a person! You can protect yourself from getting disappointed by your results by preparing effectively for the things that you struggle with the most.  

As you begin your revision, it is also important to remember not to neglect yourself for the sake of studying. It can help to stick to specific time frames or create a revision timetable to make sure that you can still maintain a healthy social life and find time to look after yourself. Also, make sure to continue to eat well, get enough sleep, and take sufficient breaks when studying. Good revision planning can allow you to keep track of your revision (and so stop you from overthinking whether you have studied enough) and help you reflect on your revision afterwards, so that you can find the best way to make revision work for yourself.

Is it Really That Hard? Gamifying Revision

Of course, some topics might be inherently more fun than others, but there are always strategies you can try to make your revision more entertaining. Making revision more fun can prevent you from losing interest and zoning out during the time you dedicate to studying.

To some extent, you can do this by approaching your revision topics through the perspectives you find most interesting. For example, you could always start or end your revision sessions which topics you enjoy the most or that come more naturally to you. Of course, you should also be careful not to prioritise these topics over others that might need your attention more (remember the importance of Spaced Practice), but it can be useful to get you find a way to get yourself in the mood for studying.

If you struggle to find motivation during revision sessions, it can help to “gamify” your studying, i.e., to turn it into a game. You can easily do this by quantifying parts of the revision process, e.g., by timing yourself going through flashcards and competing with your previous self or marking your performance on short mock tests.

Gamifying revision can also work very well when you revise with others. Think Menti or Kahoot – adding just a little bit of friendly competition into your study sessions can already make them much more fun. If you are revising by yourself, you could also work with rewards. Depending on what works best for you, you could reward yourself with sweets, longer breaks, or fun activities if you have been particularly successful on any part of your revision. Just be careful not to fall into unhealthy habits, like developing a mindset that you cannot have breaks unless you have earned them.

There are really no limits to the ways in which you might try to gamify your revision. As long as you are still working with the material you are revising, you will likely still learn something. Depending on your topic (and subject), it might be completely justified to watch a relevant film as part of your revision or read up on a subject area you find interesting. You could transform your notes into drawings or associate information with fictional narratives. The key to revising successfully is just to maintain a balance between fun and effective revision of material you need to know.

You Are Not Alone: Revising with Others

The good thing about exams is that you are not the only one writing them! You likely share exams with your entire cohort, so a lot of other people are studying for the same things at the same time as you. Revising with others can a feel much more active, and studying in a group also allows for more ways to make your revision fun. It might not be a good use of your time to create fun multiple-choice quizzes on your topic for every revision session, but if one person does it for an entire group every time, the shared effort might easily pay off. If you have group chats or other social channels for studying, you can easily share resources as well as chat socially and engage with content in less serious ways (e.g., by creating memes).

Revising with people who do not have the same exams as you can still benefit you greatly, since you might have to explain things in more detail to someone who does not know the topic at all. Finally, simply being in the same room as your friends when you study can make your revision more fun, as you will be able to spend breaks together, rather than in isolation, and can have useful discussions about how you are approaching your exams.

Conclusion

As you revise for your exams, and especially when it gets tiring, remember:

  • Exams do not define you. Instead, defining realistic goals can make it easier to maintain a good work life balance.
  • Anything can be turned into a game. You can consider what aspects of your topic interest you, what you are good at, vary your revision techniques, and implement some competition and rewards where appropriate.
  • You are not the only one studying for your exam. If you have the opportunity, you can partner with others to study together or simply share time together as you are preparing for your exams.

Good luck and have fun!