We’ve covered studying, reading, and writing skills, and now we’ve arrived at the moment that probably puts the most fear in college students’ hearts – exam time.

Whether it’s a midterm or a final, exams typically make us nervous for a number of reasons. For starters, they’re hard. If they weren’t, it wouldn’t be college. There’s also a lot riding on them. For a course that gives one midterm and a final exam, that’s only two chances to earn your grade. That’s a lot of pressure.

Coincidentally, it’s the pressure that we must first address in order to perform well on an exam. You’ve got to ease your anxiety as you prepare for the test and while you’re taking the test so that you can focus and take care of business. You can start by training yourself to adopt a positive perspective. You might think this is silly, but honestly, when you put a negative spin on things, you’re already setting the stage for something bad to happen. In other words, if you think the test is going to be impossible, you’ll be more likely to give up or not put forth your best effort. So change “this exam is going to be hard” to “this exam is going to be a challenge,” and then challenge yourself to step up to the plate.

When you’re really confident, you don’t even think of exams as exams. It’s simply an exercise, like homework, or even a crossword puzzle. Think of it like this – if you’re a basketball player shooting a foul shot, it really shouldn’t matter if you’re in practice or in a game. The ball is still round and the foul line is still the same distance from the basket. So athletes who understand the power of positive thinking can block out all of the crowd noise and the pressure, and shoot the ball just like they do in practice, even if it’s really the championship game with a tie score and no time left on the clock. They face the pressure through focus, the same as a concert violinist or a Broadway actress does. They’ve gone through the routine hundreds of times before. The only difference come “show time” is that they’re in front of a crowd. In their minds, however, there is no difference.

How do you get to this level? The first key is to block out any negative thoughts or apprehensions. Don’t think that you’ll do poorly. Even on a subconscious level, it’s important to push away doubts. College is going to have its difficult moments for everyone, not just you. The way we overcome them is by thinking positively and successfully doing the next step, which is to prepare.

In high school track, we ran. Then we ran some more. When we got tired, we kept running. We learned the basics about running form and breathing techniques, then we did a variety of warm-ups and stretches to prepare our bodies. Afterwards we worked on different skills we would need (speed, distance, etc.), then we practiced running our particular events. So as an 800 meter runner (2 laps around the track), I ran several 800s in practice. These were timed to measure progress. Later, we practiced beyond our events. Instead of running an 800, I would run a 1200 (3 laps) or a mile (4 laps). From this preparation method, I learned the following things:

1) Make sure your form is correct,
2) Always warm up,
3) Practice like it’s “game time,” and
4) Proper preparation goes beyond what’s required.

I chose this simple analogy because when I first looked back at it several years ago, I realized that it paralleled many events in my life. Initially I didn’t really enjoy track, but once I did, I began to take practice much more seriously and I did well in competition. On the flipside, I loved basketball but for some reason, I rarely practiced like it was a game. I didn’t work on skills that I knew needed improvement. Consequently, I rarely got off the bench.

Schoolwork followed the same pattern. There were some courses that I studied inside and out, either because I enjoyed the material, or I motivated myself to put forth the effort. I usually did well on exams for those classes, and often times, knew going into the test that I would be good to go. In other courses when I didn’t prepare well, either due to lack of motivation or poor time management, I only did well on the exams that were relatively simple. And trust me, there weren’t many of those.

The next section gives specific recommendations using the 4-step model outlined above. Afterwards we’ll look at some “Test Day Tips,” discuss strategies for different types of exam questions (essays, multiple-choice, problems), then talk about some things you’ll want to do after the exam is over.