Dealing with Test anxiety
I would be lying to you if I said I could walk into a midterm or final and feel calm. In fact, I don’t think many do. But if that’s you, I’m applauding.
Ever since I started high school, I’ve developed immense test anxiety in the weeks leading up to any quiz, test, or exam, to the point where it would engulf every part of my life, and I couldn’t think about anything but the test. The summer before I came to UVA, I already started getting anxious at the mere thought of my Chemistry exams (mind you, those exams were six months away, and spoiler alert: they went great). I think it’s totally normal to have some level of positive stress going into a test, as it motivates you to work hard and study well, but when it gets to the point where you’re shaking and can’t breathe at the mere thought of taking an exam, that’s when it gets out of hand.
I’m accustomed to taking exams in a room with a maximum of 25 students, but when I took my first exam at UVA and saw 400 people around me, I felt a lump in my throat. While I can be completely honest and say my test anxiety hasn’t 100% gone away, I’ve started to get over it one test at a time.
I vaguely remember the first time I experienced true test anxiety, which was the first time I took the SAT in May of my junior year. I wound up missing my first SAT a few months before because I woke up in the middle of the night with so much nausea just thinking about it that I couldn’t go. Fast forward two months, and maybe it was a combination of all my nervous energy and too much caffeine, but I felt physically sick the second I started the exam. I knew I was prepared; I had spent months taking every available practice test and devoted all my weekends to my prep course. However, for some reason, it felt like a matter of life or death at that moment. I turned so green and got dizzy that I wound up missing ⅓ of the time to take the English portion because I was about to pass out and had to leave the testing room. I vowed after that day that I was never going to take the SAT again. That is, until I realized I really needed it to apply to the colleges I wanted to go to.
From that day forward, I started to make an effort to figure out why exactly I got so anxious over exams. It’s not like the SAT was going to go on my permanent transcript or dictate how successful I’m going to be in school, but I still got so worked up over it. I decided the only way I was going to get over my test anxiety was by exposing myself to it as many times as possible. So I signed up for the SAT three more times. I still got worked up in the parking lot before every test, but by my last exam date, I felt okay. My mini form of exposure therapy worked.
The Difference in College
I didn’t take an exam that was anxiety-inducing until I got to UVA, which is when my test anxiety came back in full swing, and even worse this time. In the weeks leading up to it, I couldn’t enjoy going out with friends, going to football games, or really do anything knowing this test was hanging above my head. I called my parents every single day in hysterics because I fully believed I was up against an impossible wall to scale. No matter how much studying or practice problems I did, I really believed I was going to fail and mess up my entire academic career in my first semester of college. Now, this is an outlandish thought, looking back on it. One test does not define your knowledge in any way. But I think I was so nervous about not knowing what to expect. Yet, the second I started actually taking the test, my anxiety went away. I realized that what I had worked myself up into was so much larger than the test. When I got my grade back, I started to doubt my academic abilities much less than before, and went into every exam for the rest of the semester a little less anxious each time.
All that’s to say, I think the moral of the story is not knowing what’s yet to come is OK.
You are not your latest exam grade; you are so much more than a number or a letter. I’m about to take my first exam of the semester this week, and I’m looking at it with a sense of enthusiasm rather than dread this time around. I’m planning to take a deep breath and remind myself that, at the end of the day, it’s just a test. Even if it doesn’t go to plan, that’s OK.
You got this!
- Meghan <3