How to Ace Exam Anxiety

Do your best and accept the rest.

By Dr Mark Whittington

It’s that scary time of year. And by that I don’t mean Halloween. It’s that time when many of us are haunted by something much scarier than the ghouls, witches and jack-o’-lanterns. Exams! I can help you deal with the exam jitters. First, know your enemy.

Exam anxiety is performance anxiety and performance anxiety is the same whether it’s the stage fright experienced by a musician as the curtains go up or the stress felt by a public speaker about to take the stage. This anxiety is no different to what you feel as you are about to take a test or write an exam at school or university. It is what we call anticipatory anxiety; irrational fear of a poor outcome coupled with an exaggerated perception of negative consequences. The first thing you should know is that you are in excellent company. What you are feeling is something every great performer or sporting champion has experienced at one time or another. Everyone gets butterflies. Champions master the art of getting them to fly in formation.

Big money. Big Audience. Big pressure.

For the metaphorical illustration that follows I have chosen the metaphor of professional tennis. I have done so for good reason. While every sport is a head-game to some extent the individual performance and high stakes of professional tennis take the psychological aspect of the game to the highest level. We’ve all witnessed the tantrums and meltdowns. But we have also witnessed opponents crumble in the face of the clinical precision of cucumber-cool champions like Roger Federer.

Roger Federer plays each individual point in the moment as it comes. He puts aside thoughts of the game, set or match point. Instead he plays every single point exclusively in the present. He doesn’t dwell on the point that may have been lost before. He doesn’t project into the future. He plays the point in the here and now regardless of the implications. He doesn’t think about winning or losing or the millions of eyes that are upon him. He doesn’t think about ranking, title or the size of the event. He plays every point exactly the same way: According to his best effort on the day. Right here. Right now.

Of course this does not come without focussed practice, determination and ironclad self-discipline. But once mastered it provides a key to outstanding, sustained and consistent performance.

Now, by way of contrast let’s consider a temperamental firebrand like Nick Kyrgios, while a great player in his own right, a great athlete and a delight to watch, Nick is in many respects the polar opposite of the Federer temperament. Many times we have seen him play the point up until such time as the pressure builds and he fears losing the match. When he starts project into the future. The occasion, the title, the money and the audience into focus. Predictably this distracts him to the point where his game suffers. He becomes frustrated and angry and acts out. He stopped playing the point. To use a well-worn sports metaphor. He dropped the ball and let himself down. John McEnroe was another champion cast in a similar mould.

Trying too hard, expecting too much and projecting into the future rather than concentrating on doing our best on a given day in a given moment, derails our ability to stay focused and “on point”, to coin a phrase. And this applies as much to writing an exam as it does to tennis, football, golf, boxing or any other sport or enterprise. The results of an exam taken by a distracted person worrying about the future and fearing failure will not reflect their best potential.

Before we wrap up and leave the metaphorical tennis court, we need to consider a third category of temperament. These are the people who, in the face of performance anxiety, simply give up. They don’t “give it their best shot” and, somewhat predictably when competing for high stakes at a ruthless top professional level, they fail. For me, in the world of professional tennis, Bernard Tomić is a good example of this mindset. A young man with fabulous potential; I suspect Bernard burnt out training too hard for too long. Watching him it has often felt like he was playing because he had to, rather than because he wanted to. This emotional ambivalence, the lack of the desire or hunger to achieve, leads to inadequate preparation, lack of motivation and, inevitably, to lack lustre performance or failure.

A simple graph to help explain: Performance on the vertical axis. Stress low on the left rising to the right.

At the top: The Sweet spot of optimum performance.

A few observations specific to exams

Trying too hard adversely affects performance. Relaxing, deep breathing and calming one’s nerves positively affects performance. While meaning well, many parents still inadvertently over-pressure their children to perform well. The parents’ lack of understanding of this principle creates performance anxiety in the child whose results consequently do not reflect their best potential. Trying hard will improve performance. Trying too hard will not. It’s a question of balance.

I always told my own kids as long as they got an A for effort I could accept an F for outcome. There is more to success than ability. More often it is the capacity to work hard plus self-discipline, focused practice, perseverance and the resilience to rise above failure that lead to success. You cannot expect every performance to be a Personal Best. Aim to peak in the final be it at the Olympics or in an exam. Personal best performances are rare peaks. Aiming for a balanced sustainable best instead will relieve some of the pressure thus improving the average result. This approach often delivers a personal best when you least expect it.

“Doing your best” extends beyond surmounting a particular challenge. It is inextricably coupled to maintaining your best health. Trying so hard that the fundamentals of good health like diet, sleep and exercise start to suffer will soon lead to the slippery slope of diminishing returns. Best health helps you adopt the best possible attitude of which hope and optimism are cornerstones. Finally, everything should be tempered by your own best judgement. Life is about experience. Truly valuable experience always includes its share of failures. We learn from our mistakes. Experience that does not include mistakes does not equate to wisdom.

Speaking of wisdom, here are a few tried and tested exam tactics from someone who has at their fair share:

Success has more to do with preparation than anything else.
Reading through the paper before you start.
Plan your approach
Answer the easy questions first. (It will get your confidence up, help you relax and keep your powder dry for the more challenging ones.)
Keep your eye on the clock to give yourself time to address the more difficult questions.
Have a go at every question. It’s easier to get 50% of the balls over the net if you serve 100 times.

Which brings us back to sport and my metaphor of professional tennis. Athletes use the metaphor of “choking” for good reason. If you bite off more than you can chew in the form of anticipatory anxiety like the fear of a poor outcome along with all the negative consequences that would go with it you will choke. Be like cucumber-cool Roger Federer. Play every point individually as separate chewable bite sized chunks. Stay in the moment and on point if you want to ace your exams.

Warning this article mentions suicide.

On this World Mental Health Day, I would like to ask the question:

As education shapes our view of the world, should the changing realities of that world not shape our view of education?

According to Lifeline, 8.6 Australians resort to suicide every day. More than double the road toll! The majority of these sadly departed souls are currently men. But, as social media algorithms become ever more manipulative and increasingly dangerous, this has started to change.

Molly Russell, took her own life at the tender age of 14 after falling into a vortex of despair on social media. There’s an insidious dark ghetto in the online world that once entered cannot easily be escaped. Much of Molly’s social media activity in the last two months of her life reflected the interests of a typical vivacious teenager: Music. Fashion. Harry Potter. Jewellery. But after her death a far more disturbing reality emerged. In the six months prior to her death, more than two thousand items of content saved, liked or shared by Molly on Instagram, were related to suicide, self-harm or depression. Six months! Think about how many opportunities for positive intervention were missed! In his court testimony, the attendant consultant child psychologist said he couldn’t sleep properly after viewing the Instagram content looked at by Molly just before her death.

So just how dangerous are your algorithms? The answer comes down to what you like looking at. Social media algorithms are designed to identify what you like and deliver more of it to you. And they’re getting more and more sophisticated and better and better at it. But for all their complexity and monkey cleverness these algorithms continue to make no distinction between healthy and unhealthy content. In a post entitled “Everything you need to know about social media” sproutsocial.com writes:

“By default, social media algorithms take the reins of determining which content to deliver to you based on your behaviour”. https://tinyurl.com/mr3mtapk

The world is taking an unforgivably long time to wake up to the fact that, in the case of vulnerable emotionally developing teenagers, the status quo is repeatedly proving to be deadly.

For the first time a coroner has directly implicated social media in the cause of death. In relation to Molly’s case Coroner Andrew Walker wrote: “Molly Rose Russell died from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content.”

Molly Russell’s family is devastated. As were the families of adolescents Dolly Everett who died in 2018 and Tilly Rosewarne who suicided earlier this year. There are many more who did not make the news. Mushrooming cases of cyber bullying are rendered more dangerous or even potentially lethal for a number of obvious reasons:

Generally inadequate protections.
Absent, weak or hopelessly outdated regulation.
The almost criminal absence of a reasonable duty of care.

If we do not take immediate action to dramatically change the status quo, toxic content and dark manipulative algorithms will actively fuel the growing problem of teen suicide by driving more and more vulnerable young people beyond the point of no return. The harsh reality is we are in the midst of a global mental health pandemic. And information technology is at least partially responsible. Unlike infections caused by viruses and bacteria, toxic psychopathology leaps through cyberspace crossing borders and time zones in nanoseconds. Social media now spreads information much faster than broadcast television, radio or print media.

Mental illness affects everyone. All ages, genders, income levels, religious groups and ethnicities are vulnerable. A recent news broadcast broke with the news that a fresh-faced teen soldier, House Cavalryman Jack Burnell-Williams, who recently accompanied the Queen’s coffin, had died. A statement regarding the circumstances of his passing said there were “no suspicious circumstances”. I can’t comment directly on the specifics of this particular case. What I can say is that “no suspicious circumstances” has become an increasingly popular euphemism and placeholder for suicide. The cruel irony of a society in which the mainstream news outlets conscientiously avoid using the very word “suicide” for fear that it might inadvertently encourage copycat behaviour, while social media continues to deliver a dark torrent of bleak, depressing content to moody vulnerable teenagers is almost too ridiculous and painful to bear.

Our ever-changing technologically fluid world connects us in more ways than we have ever been and yet, paradoxically, according to multiple research studies we feel lonelier and more disconnected than ever. Millions are suffering in lonely silence.

Molly, Dolly, Tilly and Jack deserved better!

So what can we do?

Go where the sad and lonely eyes are. We need to make help and light as easily accessible on social media channels as the dark, depressing and dangerous content is. There is no getting away from having to fish where the fish are. We have to go out onto the streets of that dark metaphorical cyber-ghetto to meet and save our sons and daughters in the shadows where their eyes are.

Social media must be regulated as it is obviously unable or unwilling to regulate itself. I’m not advocating censorship. I am simply calling for a measure of balance. One simple solution would be to adjust the algorithms to send up a red flag when a user consistently consumes large amounts of dark and potentially dangerous content. Purveyors and pushers of content can now slice and dice data down to fine detail. Surely it must be a simple thing for them to tell us when we are overdoing dark and dangerous material. The least they could do is ask if we’re ok. The tin your baked beans came in will tell you how much salt is in it. But you can binge on dangerous content, just like Molly Russell did, without receiving any caution or warning at all. Dark and depressing content should at least be counterbalanced by posts offering help and education. Under the Liquor Act 1992, it is an offence to sell or supply liquor to an unduly intoxicated person. What about continuing to supply dangerously depressed people with dark depressing content?

The tragically passed young people whose names I have mentioned here may have been young, inexperienced and impressionable but they weren’t stupid! If we had taught them the basic principles of psychological hygiene along with how to recognise when they were being manipulated they would have understood that just like bad weather, shadows on the soul pass eventually. They would have been empowered to make better choices. Wellness for Educators

Psychological education needs to be an integral part of general education -starting right now. And not just for adults and teenagers. According to the world renowned Dunedin Longitudinal Study conducted to my alma mater, The University of Otago, positive intervention and the teaching of basic psychological hygiene can make a difference and should start in kindergarten!

We are taught to wash our hands, clean our teeth, exercise and eat more green vegetables. When it comes to looking after our mental health what are we taught? Nothing. Zilch. Zip. Zero. Nought. That’s one of the reasons why the tide of Mental Illness was rising alarmingly long before Covid turned it into a tsunami.

World Mental Health Day

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