James Davey, The Exam Coach, helps secondary school students develop the study skills and exam performance techniques required for exam success. As each person experiences stress differently, James has put together a guide offering a variety of solutions.

What is exam stress?

Without getting into too much unnecessary detail I reckon the definition below will suffice for the purpose of this guide.

Exam stress is a feeling of being under abnormal pressure and fearing your exams are going to go badly. As a result, you may feel influencing the outcome of your exams is beyond your control. This feeling is created by hormones and chemicals released in the body as a consequence of an external factor (exams) which can also cause other negative mental and physical symptoms.

Basically, exam stress is a good thing, up to the point where it fosters focused performance, but too much of it can cause overwhelm and decreased performance.

Without stress we have little pushing us into action. In fact, we can actually end up becoming super stressed out by doing nothing constructive! When stress kicks in and helps us pull off that deadline we thought was a lost cause it becomes beneficial. But when stress results in negative symptoms such as insomnia, poor concentration and an impaired ability to do the daily things we normally do, we know we need to reign it back under control.

Now that we’ve established stress isn’t something to be ignored but that it should be recognised, carefully managed, and then used to our advantage, here’s what you can do…

To read the full details of The Exam Coach’s article on how to manage exam stress, click here.