Success in school revolves around tests, quizzes, numbers and scores. If you don’t get good grades on your tests, you won’t have a good GPA. If you don’t get high SAT and ACT scores, you won’t get into college. Or so they say…
I am writing to you as one of the world’s worst test takers out there. I’m the kind of student that will study for days, know every single detail of information, and flunk the test. Today’s education system is so focused on test scores that kids are more willing to cheat to get higher grades than actually thoroughly learn the material. Though this may work in the short term, chances are, they’ll just forget the information minutes after the test and never think about it again. School is supposed to be about learning new material. When did it become so focused on numbers?
People like me tend to do better on written or oral exams. I jump for joy when a teacher says there will be an essay assessment instead of a test. If I am able to write an essay to prove what I know, I have more freedom in what I can say. An essay does not demand exact answers and specific equations; rather, a creative means to express all you have taken in from that unit.
When I sit down for an exam, it intimidates me. I feel like I need to rush through it and get all of the information I have ever known on those pages immediately. When I don’t know the answer to one problem, I begin to question everything else I probably got right. Since I am a test taking speed demon, I tend to make sloppy mistakes that should have been easy to correct. When I sit down in front of that blank packet, all of the information escapes me and I panic.
Through the years, I have received countless bad test grades—ones that discouraged me so far to a point that I never thought I would make it past another failing calculus grade. But you know what I realized? They’re all just numbers. Trivial numbers that mean nothing in the larger scheme of things. If you fail your Spanish midterm, you’ll still get into college. If you fail your biology exam, you’ll still get a job.
One bad test grade will not affect you later in life. We get so caught up in the numbers that we forget to look at the bigger picture. It isn’t worth it to stay up all night stressing over one test you may or may not fail because, guess what? You’re allowed to get bad grades every once in a while. If you’re a bad test taker like me, maybe you feel you get them a little too often. But if you’re trying your absolute hardest, that’s all you can do.
With finals right around the corner, I’ve thought of some ways us bad test takers can try and prevail through the dreaded exams:
1. Start studying early. Your brain won’t synthesize information you crammed into it last night. It takes time to remember a large bulk of material, so give yourself time to learn it.
2. Sleep the night before an exam. Nothing is worse than being dead tired during a big test. Your brain won’t turn on and it feels like the end of the world. Even if you think staying up those extra hours to study will help, it won’t. Your brain needs rest to function properly.
3. Bring water to the exam. Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed in the middle of a test, I take a deep breath and a gulp of water to clear my head.
4. If you see a section that is stumping you, skip it and go on. You don’t want your uncertainty from that one part to screw with you for the entire test. You can come back to it later and figure it out then.
5. Remind yourself that this is just one test. You have a huge life ahead of you and even if you fail, your friends and family will still love you and you will still get a job in the future. Focus on the important things in life when you’re feeling like this will stump you. It helps to clear your head and make you feel more confident.
So to all of you bad test takers out there, don’t stress. It’s not worth it to cry over a bad grade. Your GPA will be fine and everyone you care about will still love you. We suffer from an incurable disease that makes us feel like our academic world is ending and success will never find us, but we all know that’s not true. So the next time you get a C instead of an A, be proud of yourself because you tried your hardest and that’s what’s most important.