226. "Remember, Its Only An Exam": Keeping Your Cool In Exam Season

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Hello and welcome to the Exam Study Experts Podcast.
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I'm your host, exam success psychologist, author, and researcher, William Wadsworth.
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Our theme for the last couple of episodes has been surviving and thriving when you're in exam taking mode.
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If you didn't catch last week's episode with Brian Heid all about handling exam pressure, it's a must-listen if you're taking exams.
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And I'd suggest listening to that episode right through to the end.
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For me, the best part of the whole conversation was in that last 10-15 minutes.
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The whole conversation is good stuff, and you've got to understand the context from the earlier parts of the conversation for that end segment to make sense.
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But right at the end, Brian gave us a masterclass step by step on how to mentally approach sitting an exam so that you can perform at your best in what is a relatively high pressure situation and keep those exam nerves or test taking anxieties in check.
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For those of you that don't know anything about Brian's background, he's a pro stuntman, uh turned high-stakes performance expert.
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And when I say pro stuntman, I mean pro-stuntman at the highest levels in film and big budget TV.
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And when I say high-stakes performance experts, I mean at the absolute highest levels as well.
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Uh, from academic research uh to penning a number of popular books on the subject, and even serving as a master resilience trainer to the US Army for over a decade.
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So today I want to explore uh handling the pressure of exam season, but coming at it from a slightly different angle to Brian.
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And my hope is that between Brian's episode last week and my thoughts for you today, you end up with a pretty powerful toolkit to help you bring your A game when it matters most, even when the pressure's on in a big exam.
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So today is all about five helpful mental reframes or beliefs to really try and focus in on in exam season.
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The five specific things I've selected to talk about in this episode are the ideas that have consistently had the biggest practical benefits for the most people from all my years of coaching students and professionals in preparing for and taking exams.
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So let's dive in.
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In at number five, what do you actually need?
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Think about your goal in an upcoming exam.
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Maybe it's a simple pass or fail type situation.
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Uh, maybe it's a specific grade that you'd simply just like, uh, or perhaps it's to meet an offer from a college or university or employer.
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Goals are good because they give us drive and focus in our exam prep.
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But sometimes, but especially in that immediate run-up to an exam, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that almost all exam goals have room for error and often quite a lot more of it than you might have sort of got in your head.
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So let's take an example.
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Let's see, let's say you need to score 75% on the exam to pass or to get that specific grade that you are seeking.
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75% means you can afford to drop one in every four marks.
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So for every four marks on the paper, you only need to get three of them right and you can afford to get one of them wrong.
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That in effect is a huge swathe of the paper.
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The last quarter of the paper, effectively, you can afford to get completely wrong, and you can still achieve your goal.
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So while I obviously encourage people to make good use of those final days in and around an exam, please don't beat yourself up if you don't finish every single past paper, if you don't go back over every single topic, or even if there's still the odd corner of the paper that despite sensible efforts, you haven't quite managed to cover or not quite to the level of detail you'd like.
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And by the way, that is increasingly common at high levels of academic study as the scope of exams balloons.
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We often find ourselves in that situation where we need to just cut our cloth a little bit and prioritize our efforts.
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We can do anything, but we don't have time to do everything, so we need to prioritize and a focus.
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What do you actually need, it may be less than you think, in order to achieve your goals?
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In a number four, what's your plan B?
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So speaking of goals, if we're so fixated on a goal, and especially if that's a stretch for our abilities, it can sometimes cause us so much stress and angst that it makes us less likely, not more likely, that we achieve the goal in the first place.
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Now, this one may feel counterintuitive, but actually being more comfortable with your plan B can be a real help.
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So we still shoot for the moon, we still shoot for that success, of course, but we know that if it doesn't work out, we can retake, we can reapply, we can go a different route.
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We'll be okay.
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Life doesn't end at that point.
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When we take that intense pressure off your shoulders a little bit, when we get so, so fixated on our plan A and nothing else will cut it, when we just take a little bit of that pressure off by getting a little bit more comfortable with plan B, counterintuitively, we can then breathe again and we actually have a better shot at achieving our potential and not needing that plan B after all.
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In it number three, focus on your race.
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Don't get sidetracked with what your peers are up to.
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Trying to dial down the volume in terms of your mental chatter about who's studied what, how much they've done, how they're doing it, what resources they've used, what they know, what marks they're getting in their practice papers.
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Don't worry about any of it.
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It's a recipe for getting caught up in your head, and I speak from experience here.
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Um now, if you've got a study buddy and you're on the same page uh and chatting to them about the exam, you find that quite supportive.
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Uh it helps you feel a bit calmer rather than the opposite.
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That's absolutely fine.
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You're a good source of support for each other.
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Keep going.
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That's not what I'm saying here.
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Sometimes we have other contacts uh that are, you know, very much kind of they're always talking about what's on the exam and what they're doing, what they don't, and it doesn't make us feel good.
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You know, we feel a bit lousy on comparison, or we start worrying, oh, well, I haven't done that, or I've not used that resource or whatever, and it throws us off our game.
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For those kinds of contacts, you know, it may be a case that we need to perhaps just just sort of gently but firmly set that boundary and say, you know, look, I'm getting quite stressed, I'm getting quite anxious about these exams.
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Is it okay if we don't talk so much about the content of the exam when we're hanging out?
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And ultimately, if they're struggling to sort of respect that boundary, then it may be a case of perhaps just temporarily hanging out with them a little bit less often for a few weeks while exams are on.
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So this one's all about focusing on your race, focus on using your time well, doing what makes sense to you, making the best progress you can, doing your best in this exam, and don't worry about what the rest of the uh pack are up to.
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In it number two, play the game to win, even if you don't respect the rules.
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So it's an interesting one.
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Uh quite a lot of you listening to the podcast like learning, you enjoy academic pursuits, you tend to be quite good at it, you like your subjects.
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But sometimes we come up against exams we don't really like very much.
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Does that classic school kids complain of their maths or their geography exam being full of pointless, useless stuff?
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You know, why would I ever need to factorise a quadratic equation or know about the different volcanoes in practice?
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I'm never going to use that in my future career.
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Even for older scholars, once you've specialized in your chosen field, there can be issues around this idea as well.
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So, as an example, some of the medical specialists I coach in preparation for their board exams or speciality exams can sometimes develop a low respect for the exam they're preparing for.
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This can be particularly true if we're in a retake type situation.
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We've had some bad experiences with that exam before.
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And particularly when that's combined with your sense that, you know, you've legitimately, and you might be absolutely right here, you might have quite a high level of expertise in this field.
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Perhaps you yourself are involved in mentoring or teaching juniors in your field, and you fundamentally disagree with what's on the exam or how it's assessed, and have this sense that, you know, if you basically, if you were set in the exam, you'd do it quite differently.
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And you may well have a good point.
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But here's the thing: this is still the exam you need to take.
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And if your respect for this exam is low, it's to your disadvantage because it makes it much harder to show up your best either in your exam prep or on exam day itself.
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So I believe that to be successful and to give ourselves the best chance of success, we need to set aside any philosophical disagreements with the exam, almost see the exam as a game and a game that we're gonna play to win.
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So for now, the game is as it is.
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We might one day rewrite the rules, uh, perhaps we go into that field and we end up in a senior position and we're we're having some influence over what's on the exam.
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That's when you can start to influence the rules of the game yourself if that's the path you're choosing.
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But for now, let's accept the game as it is, accept the rules as they are, and we give it our all.
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We play it to win.
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It can sometimes help with this to stop and brainstorm what is the experience of this exam designed to teach you?
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What is it going to teach you?
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Um, so maybe, yeah, maybe you never see a quadratic equation again, but learning to solve problems that you find challenging is a super useful transferable skill that's going to come in handy, whatever you go into in life.
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Or maybe you don't need to know all those obscure tables of cytokines in your clinical practice day to day.
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But you know what, developing that skill of memorizing really challenging and complex data is actually quite a valuable mental skill to practice and develop.
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If nothing else, embracing these challenges in our learning, so you can see it almost as tests of character and building resilience and perseverance, developing that mental muscle to engage with challenge and find ways to break through it.
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And I think that's certainly a muscle we'd all want to develop.
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So find the reasons why you're going to get something good out of preparing for this exam, even if that wasn't perhaps quite what the examiner had in mind.
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Find your reasons why that it makes sense for you and embrace the exam for what it is today.
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Finally, in it number one, remember it's only a blooming exam.
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So, particularly if it's been your primary life goal uh for a while now, perhaps these exams is the culmination of literally years of study and work.
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It can be understandable that any set this set of exams feels like a big deal.
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You've put all that work in, you've been at this for years.
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You want to get the outcome you deserve.
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Of course you do.
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But don't lose sight of the fact that exams don't define who you are.
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They're not your identity, you're still an amazing, kind, generous human with all your unique traits, and only a tiny portion of all of that is being tested by this particular exam.
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My university tutor, a formidable but very down-to-earth scientist, Professor Margaret Stanley, always used to email us at the start of exam season with the advice to remember it's only a blooming exam.
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Her way, I think, of giving some much needed perspective to a bunch of anxious students.
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So thank you for tuning in today.
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Please drop us a like or follow or share this with someone you think would benefit from some of these ideas.
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And why not drop a note in the chat on which of these ideas you're gonna write on a post-it note by the kettle this exam season to help you remember it and help you feel calmer and more in control as you head into your big exams.
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I want to take this opportunity to say thank you as always for tuning in.
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I'll see you again soon, and I want to wish you every success, especially if you've got exams coming up.
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Very best of luck, everyone.
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You've got this.
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If you've got exams coming up, you can now get all of William's favourite tips and tricks to save you time and get you higher grades, all in one handy cheat sheet.
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Grab your coffee at examstudiexpert.com slash free tips.
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Thanks again for listening and see you soon.