Dealing with exam results stress
University is very stressful for many people, it is a high pressure environment and it is so because our futures depend on how we do in university. During the term we deal with stresses relating to assignment deadlines and tests, then later in the semester we get stressed by dp lists which will determine whether we get to write our exams or not. If you get dp then the studying actually begins and if you have missed some lectures and haven’t really been paying attention during lectures this is when you realise how much you don’t know and that you will be fighting an uphill battle and the time seems to be against you. Then exams start and you actually experience exam stress, you are even more stressed out if you have multiple exams per week and they are not well spaced out, you are calculating the minimum marks you need to get for each course and if you were not religious already you may even start turning to god, praying for help. You start thinking of the consequences of failing certain courses, because if you fail certain courses they block you from doing other courses in the following semester as they are prerequisites.
You write the exam and you fall into one of these three categories:
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1 – You have a healthy class average and you found the exam
to be manageable so you are pretty sure you passed and so the results for that
course won’t stress you as you have a general idea where you will land (in the
60’s or higher).
2 – You had a healthy class average but the exam was rough
you don’t know how you did but you are hoping you got enough marks to be over
the subminimum required for you to pass that course.
3 – You barely made dp and you had to actually pass the exam
in order to pass the course or even worse you had to get a mark for the exam
above 60 when you were struggling to get 50’s in your class tests. You found
the exam to be difficult but you are still hoping god answered your prayers and
you have actually managed to steal a pass.
The thing is for most of us you are in different categories
for different courses (the three categories I have just outlined above), course
chowers will be in category 1 for all courses and they may be stressing about
being on the dean’s merit list and maintaining their high marks for their elite
bursaries, average students will have a mixture of the three categories but
mostly they will be managing but there will be that one course they are finding
very difficult, and student who are struggling with have a mixture of mostly
category 2 & 3 and when you have more than one course where you are in
category 3 for you are going to have a very stressful vac and you start
thinking of courses you will be blocked from the following semester and
possible risk of academic exclusion.
Category 1 people will have a relaxing stress free vac
whereas the rest of us will have a variations of the following that I will
mention below.
Things that most people will do during vac to try and not think about results:
- You will go home and try not to think about school because
you have missed your family or your home town but the first thing everyone
always asks you about is “how is varsity?” and “how were exams?” and naturally you
will lie and say everything is fine without going into much detail because you
don’t want to think of school and exams, you came home to relax, to enjoy your
mothers cooking, to forget about that place called university. Your family is
happy you are back for one day and you start being given chores and you will be
over being home by the first week and missing your varsity freedom.
- You will try and go catch up and have a good time with your
old high school or neighbourhood friends or relatives just to keep your mind off things, this usually involves a lot of liquor for many people until you have to
go back to varsity.
- You will join the gym or go back to gym if you haven’t been
going because school was keeping you too busy, just to destress and keep your
mind off school.
- You will spend a great amount of time on the internet and
social media to distract from thinking of exams and/or boredom.
- You start watching and catching up to local soapies which
you have not been watching while at varsity.
- You start watching
all the series you downloaded on your laptop before going back home only to
find out you will go through a season a day and the series you have won’t last
the whole vac, you will end up resorting to watching normal tv to pass the
time.
- People with cars and some cash saved up do cool things like
taking road trips to fun places.
- If you are lucky enough maybe you will even take a real
vacation instead of just going home.
No matter what you do during vac to keep your mind off
results, it won’t save you from the nerves and fear of results day but it will
have to do because what else can you do, as everything at that point is out of
your hands. The days are long and stressful and all you can do is wait and find
ways to occupy your time until you find out your fate and strategize your next
move with the help of your faculty advisors from there.
