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Friday, August 14, 2020

How to overcome Fear of Exam.

Tips for students to overcome  and say good bye to exam fear



I remember a story which I feel worth telling before we get on with the subject, it is a prelude to the discussion...The story goes like this….

A little boy was happily skating in a large space; He had only recently learnt to skate and was enjoying every stroke of deft footwork he was making as he maneuver his way zooming past his friends.

His mother, worried about his safety, watched over him continuously waving her hand and shouting instructions.

As he was having a jolly time skating, he noticed a small shadow forming behind him. But he neglected it for a while and lost in the fun he was having skating. But soon shadow began to loom so large as to threaten to swallow him. The boy got scared out of his wits and began to run. But it was a futile run as the grisly shadow overwhelmed him and swallowed him. The monstrous shadow that always lurked in him was his fear of exams.

 The above narrative is a metaphor. As normal kids, we’re naturally fearless, joyful, and very confident spontaneously indulging in our passions but somewhere along, the society, parents, and the system came up with their false demands and expectations on us and effectively sowed the seeds of fear of failure in the child. Fear of failure because it’s an artificial demand unrelated to natural talent oriented towards our passion. This is the origin of the fear of exams that grows from bugbear to a monster that sometimes terrorizes hapless kids to even suicide.

It’s not uncommon to feel the fear just before and during  exams. Every student must have gone through this phase experiencing the mild to severe form of fear. As per the study, 30% to 40% of the students suffer severely and 30% moderately and the rest of the students experience a mild form of fear.

SEMrush

Let’s find out the reason for the fear and also ways to deal with it.

What is the Genesis of Fear?

         1. Pressure from parents:

Parents pressurize kids just to keep up with false prestige. Sadly, the parents never consider the natural/special talent the kid has for something within or outside academics, but they force the kid to follow someone's success story and practice herd mentality without understanding the child's potential, likes and dislikes. Parents are wrongly influenced by neighbors and relatives. The continuous pressure on the child creates negative thought patterns that culminate in developing anxiety, tension, and loss of self-confidence.

2. Teachers:

Education is not accumulation of information but character building.

 Teachers are the best architects building child’s character.

They play a key role in the overall development of the child. They are the role models should lead by their examples.Such teachers  have a huge influence on kid's behavior. However, a teacher  can make or break confidence of a child. Some teachers instead of motivating and creating a competitive spirit, criticize the child’s abilities, and make an unfair comparison with other students. Such remarks impact them negatively and dent their confidence.

3.Peer pressure:

Peer pressure is a high influencer and affects the behavior pattern; it is good to have a little pressure as it helps to develop a competitive spirit. Students get confused when the peer influence is not in alignment with personal growth agenda or development. They remain clueless about the future course of action and, naturally, stress builds up.

 4. Lack of planning and preparation:

No significant achievement is worth mentioning without planning and preparation. They are the two important steps in effectively achieving the goal. Some students lack planning & preparation mainly because of casual attitude and lethargy, added to that they get misguided by the friends and seniors. They happily while away  time only to realize that exams are at the doorsteps and in a hurry begin last-minute crash preparation that only ends up in a big mess.

5. Lack of confidence:

If faith can move mountains, confidence can shatter them.

Confidence can break the unbreakable, that’s the power of confidence. When aspiration of students don’t match with expectations of parents  and society, added to that if he is being bombarded with  negative affirmations and criticized for some gaps in life affects them negatively, and  the student may gradually lose confidence. The feeling of unfit or that he is a misfit begins to take hold of him.

 What are the symptoms of fear of exams:

Symptoms range from simple anxiety to panic attacks and in rare cases, the students may resort to the extreme step of committing suicide.

We can classify symptoms in 3 parts.

1. Physical Symptoms: Physical symptoms are the first manifestation of anxiety neurosis.

Symptoms include, heavy sweating, giddiness, diarrhea, short of breathe, palpitation and butterflies in the stomach, and dry mouth.

2. Emotional Symptoms: Feelings of anger,  hatred, disappointment,helplessness, loneliness and loss of confidence are some of the emotional symptoms.

3.Cognitive and Behavioural symptoms: Finding tough to understand the subject, negative thinking, difficulty in concentration, inability to recall the subject.

During my college days, some of my studious friends, who meticulously planned & prepared (even during my PG course) for the examination much in advance had either scored less marks or flunked in the exams. The obvious reason was mental pressure which they couldn't cope with, they lost self-confidence and miserably failed to perform in the exam.

Students undergo tremendous tension in the exam hall, they perspire a lot, when writing the answer their hands' tremor and vision becomes hazy, sometimes negative thoughts flood the minds. Imagination runs riot on the possibility of getting tough questions and subsequent consequences. When the question paper is received, it appears like a death warrant.  All these symptoms ultimately take a toll on the students.

The above symptoms add up to distress and bring down the student’s confidence level. So, it’s time for us to look seriously at some tangible solutions to come out of fear and perform better.

 

a.       Physical preparation:

Being physically fit is an important aspect to keep your energy level high. A fragile & sick body is a big hindrance to performance. It’s imperative to focus and work on your health:  Follow a good diet regime, sleep adequately, and do small stretching exercises to increase   flexibility and tone up the  muscles. Exercise  ensures a continuous flow of positive energy to the brain. Regular exercises help in releasing good hormones and keep your mood elevated.

 b. Mental Preparation:

“A sound mind resides in a sound body”. Now it’s time to take care of our mind.

Mind is a powerful tool, it can do wonderful things provided you learn how to harness and use it to your advantage. Mind is susceptible to suggestions whether positive or negative it creates a lasting impression.

We need to feed our mind with positive suggestions through affirmation: like, I am confident, I am capable,  I am not stressed, I will score good marks. Keep feeding your mind and see the magic.

Avoid stress:  Identify the cause of stress and work on it.  Example: Your effort to score better marks than one of your friends (Secretly harbor in your heart) causes stress, the effect is, you frequently forget or fail to recall the subject.

Action point: Work on reducing stress by doing meditation and breathing exercises, which help in calming your mind and enhances your memory. Work on solving puzzles which increases your grasping ability and concentration. Find ways to beat the competition. 

                     c. Study Preparation:

“Plan your work and workout your plan” should be the motto.

We are good at planning but when it comes to putting it in action we fail miserably

Few tips below may help you to plan and execute without much stress.

      a)   Make a realistic time table well before the exam.
b)   Devote each day to cover all the subjects.
c)   Identify which subject you need to improve and focus more on it.
d)  Try to solve the previous year's question papers.
e)  Pick the right time for your studies, for some early morning suits better and they can concentrate, for some late-night study suits, however, make sure you get adequate sleep.
f)   Make brief notes and highlight the points in the highlighter, these points help you during revision.
g)  Ask for help in case if you are unable to focus or understand the subject.
h)  Rule 2-2-2 should work better: Study two times, Write two times and Revise two times.( SWR -rule works better with ration 2-2-2. However, you can be flexible as per your convenience)

This sums up the exam fear. Just want to reiterate once again as a parting note. Society, parents and teachers play a pivotal role in molding child’s future and hence you need to be careful in your words and actions.  Inspire..Encourage and Empower them.

“If you are planning for a year sow a rice: if you are planning for a decade sow a tree: if you are planning for  a lifetime educate people”.

 


16 comments:

  1. Thank you. You have wonderfully unexplained the fact.
    Children are extremely talented. As they start schooling: they get into the rat race

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Dr.Sowmya,
      You are right, when they get in to rat race,all the problem starts

      Delete
  2. Wonderful thoughts. Well articulated story line resonating the mindset of childern

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Raghunandan,
      My endeavor is to get the fact across, message can reach someone and probably new beginning starts.

      Delete
  3. Dear Srikanth,
    Your blog on exam fear and loss of confidence has been scripted well and every one undergoes such mental stress and pressure during exams, as you have mentioned less marks is not because of lack of preperation but lack of presentation and fear of losing out is to be written in golden words. The solution you have given to overcome stress, preperation, medication, exercise, working on previous years question papers are awasome. I am sure your blog will not only help students, but also parents teachers andothers who can correct themselves. Well done keep it up

    Narayan Sharma
    Chartered Accountant
    Vice President-Finance
    Bangalore

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much Sharma for your wonderful comments..

      Delete
  4. Srikant
    Education's business is to aid a child to uncover whatever exists within the child, its 'swa-dharma', self-truth, and express it in society. We're all like seeds sown by God in his garden, meant to yield certain fruit. Teachers' duty is recognise the type of seed lodged in the heart of a child and to nurture it by creating the right environment for its blossom. It's essentially a gardener's work. A tamarind seed can only grow into a tamarind tree and yield tamarinds, not mangoes. Forcing it to yield mangoes is not only detrimental to the plant but to those who eat sour mangoes. The child and the society both get to lose.
    Once a child discovers it's passion, it'll be in its elements, its animal spirit released and spontaneous energy flow towards its realisation. This spontaneity is what we see missing in our children and society at large. Instead we see spontaneous fear gripping children during exams. Because the child is not in its elements.
    Sadly we're producing citizens filled with "artificial zest for life".
    Srikant you have done a good job coming out with this timely article articulating all the pros and cons of bad education, policies and parenting that ironically sow the seeds of fear rather than excitement in the hearts of children. And the remedial action all of us, especially children must take to cope with fear of Exams.

    GS


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much GS for your wonderful views.

      Delete
  5. So wonderfully articulated and with the new education reforms hopefully things will change and get the children off the rat race - Seema

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Seema,
      Cant avoid rat race, being in the race and not to develop the stress and fear but to find an intelligent ways to handle is important.We all should strive to help children.

      Delete
  6. Meticulous analysis, informative especially for parents to guide their children. - Shashikanth

    ReplyDelete
  7. Dear Srikanth,
    I am in complete agreement with your view on fear of exams. This fact is also emphasized by JK and others.(Valley school run by J K foundation does not believe in annual examinations) As mentioned by you about parental fear, we have to understand one thing here that, the fear in parents about kids performance in the exam is driven by external forces such as their past experiences, paying more fee for the children with less score, competition in the society etc., No parent wants to create fear in minds of their children. Secondly, the present day education system wherein the score card is the only measure to know about the kid is also wrong. We do not have proper education policy and evaluation of learning at different levels( Hope new education policy will contribute to welfare of the students).The parents must be encouraged/educated by the school as well as society/Government towards improving the health (both mental and physical) of children. We cannot expect children to plan their studies and subjects and it is the responsibility of the teachers to do that.Even at corporate levels, the HR people to should stop looking into the score cards at the time of appointments/job interviews etc,. Instead they can go in for assessment of ability of the candidate through some psychological tests wherein they can measure the student's ability and suitability for the job. To day, in campus selections preference is given only to those who have scored overall high score in previous years/sems. This trend will give rise to fear of discard in students. the same fear will percolate down to students to parents to teachers to everybody in the society. The fear of exams will remain in the society till we change our mindset towards learning and its evaluation.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thanks Kanthi for elaborate feedback,
    I agree that onus is just not on the kids, we as society, parents, teachers and system have collective responsibility and play a vital role in shaping up the kids and bringing reform in education system, where kid can be fearless and learn and contribute to society in a better manner.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Really appreciate the way you have articulated it. You hit the nail on the head . If you are planning for a lifetime educate people, well said. I just hope we could bring about transformation in the education system where we get to empower ourselves with authentic knowledge . Pursuing our academics worth our life. The kind of education , knowlegde , the fear , the competativeness, the pressure that all of us have undergone including our children is not worthy of our life. Lets get back to our roots .Lets provide our kids the space to explore , to pursue what they want , a skill based learning , which will lead them to ultimate satifaction of an achevement.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thanks Lakshmi,
    Your points are valid and we should think and act in that direction.

    ReplyDelete