SCHOOL
Dear Daughter, Are You Afraid Of an Exam in School?
Re-frame it in your mind and be free from worry once and for all.
Dear daughter,
School represents a large part of your early life. It can be fun and exciting, but sometimes it can also be stressful. This stress usually emanates from either the social environment or the evaluation of your knowledge. Today, I wanted to talk to you about how best to prepare for exams and especially how to stop worrying about them. While you have to go to school, study, and take exams, worrying about them is a waste of time.
Exams are scary
Most of us don’t like taking exams. We feel stress, anticipation, and fear before entering the classroom and sitting down to face the challenge before us. Here’s a little secret. It’s a lot scarier in your mind than it ends up being when we get there. We build this whole thing up in our mind, make a big deal of it, and then when we have to take the exam, we just do what we have always done. We sit down, examine the questions and tasks, and do our best.
While studying for and taking the exam is mandatory, worrying about it is entirely optional. This is where stress comes from, as does fear.
Here’s how you alleviate the stress before taking an exam and make sure you’re optimally prepared for the task at hand:
- Re-frame exams from something to fear to something that simply must be done. Fear doesn’t help, but it will hinder your memory and skills, causing you to perform worse. There is nothing to fear anyway. It’s all in your head.
- You either pass or learn what you didn’t know before and do better next time. There is always a next time. You can only truly fail if you give up. Until then, it’s all just stepping stones on the path of ultimate success. Keep going, adapt, learn, grow, and sooner or later, you will achieve your goals.
- Realize that even the worst-case result from any exam is not the end of the world. You can fix most grades later on. Even if you get a negative grade and fail a class or even a year, you will be just fine.
- Accept the worst-case scenario as a possible outcome, let yourself feel what it would be like, and stop fearing it. Face the tiger you fear, and it will turn into a kitten.
- Prepare to the best of your ability, and let go of everything else. Control what you can, which is the time and effort you apply preparing for any exam and don’t think or worry about the rest.
- Realize that you can never know everything and prepare for any possible question, but you can prepare well enough. You can only anticipate or predict some of the challenges you will meet on the day of the exam, as there is an element of randomness and luck involved. You can’t control that, so forget it entirely.
- Focus all your effort on the process of studying and preparing for the exam, and completely let go of the results. What will be, will be. Embrace the unknown, and don’t worry about it. You’ll cross that bridge when you get there. You don’t know what will happen. It’s out of your hands.
- Trust in yourself. Trust your ability to adapt to new information, study harder, and constantly improve. You can and will overcome any challenge that life or school throws at you. You’ve got this. I believe in you!
- Never study on the last day. I would suggest taking one day off from preparing before the day of the exam, but you probably won’t listen. So then, just don’t even touch your notes on the day of the exam. You won’t learn anything new. You can’t make up for lost time on the last day. That is an illusion. A silly one. All that will do is make you more nervous and negatively influence the result. You’ve done what you can until that point. Let it go. What’s done is done!
- Make sure to be in the best possible mindset for any exam. You operate at peak performance when you are calm and relaxed and when your mind is clear. This is your job on the day of the exam. That is where your leverage is. It’s the most important factor you can control on the last day! Not to stress yourself out by worrying about the results or trying to make up time for studying. It won’t help but will hinder your ability to remember, perform, and operate immensely. Relax, chill, and find peace on the day of the exam.
- I always had a mental hack for the day of any exam. It helped me immensely. I was the only kid who was always completely relaxed before exams, sometimes literally falling asleep in the waiting room while other kids were shaking in their boots. Coincidentally, I always pulled through at the last minute, even when the stakes were high. I called that mental hack a “DGF phase.” Translated — “I don’t give a f*** phase.” I would purposely enter this DGF phase on the day before and the day of the exam. I’ve done all I can. I don’t care about the rest. It’s out of my hands now, anyway. Fuck it! Now, it was time to chill and have fun. The DGF phase is awesome!
Any taking of an exam is composed of three factors:
- Preparation — How hard have you studied and prepared? What have you learned?
- Your mindset — How relaxed, calm, and present are you at the moment of the exam?
- Luck and randomness — Who is doing the examination, what questions or tasks will you get, how will you feel on that day, and what happens in the end?
Focus on the two you control and let go of the third entirely. By doing this, you’ve done all that is in your power. Nothing else will make a speck of difference. It’s a waste of time and energy. Let it go.
You are not your grades
Every single exam, grade, success, or failure in school does not represent who you are and what you are ultimately capable of! Always keep this in mind, love. We all fail sometimes. It’s no big deal.
Most of us fail countless times, especially the successful ones. The higher you strive to reach, the more challenges and risks you take, and the more you will fail. Failing doesn’t matter. Successful people are successful not because they didn’t fail but because they failed quickly, learned from it, and tried repeatedly until they ultimately made it.
Successful people are fearless in failing. They embrace it and re-frame it from something to fear to something necessary while looking for a way to succeed. It’s, therefore, not something bad but ultimately good, as they can’t succeed without failing.
One single or even a few failed grades mean nothing. Never let them define you, and never take it personally. Just because you failed some exam, that does not mean you are a failure yourself!
You can only ever truly fail if you give up
Until then, it’s all just a part of the progress. It’s a journey on the way to ultimate success. Re-frame failing into learning. Learning is always positive. You know more today than you knew yesterday. That is good, not bad. You tried something. It didn’t work. Now you are wiser for the experience and will do better next time. There is no failure or anything worth being ashamed or embarrassed about. That is just nonsense. Get over it!
There you go, love. There is no need to fear exams and falling. Accept that randomness and luck are involved, and focus only on what you can control. Even if you fail, it’s not the end of the world. Accept failure as a learning opportunity, and do better next time. Prepare for any exam to the best of your ability, but relax, chill, and cultivate a peaceful mind on the day of the exam. It will give you the best chance of doing well and performing to the best of your ability.
By doing all of the above, you’ve done all you can. The rest is out of your hands. What exactly is left to worry about? Thats right. Nothing! Have fun on this journey, darling, and don’t worry so much.
Love, Dad.
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