I’m sure you’ll do great!

It’s that time of the term again. Well, for those of us unfortunate enough to have end-of-term exams anyway (e.g. me). As the days are getting shorter, colder and revision hours are ticking away like a time bomb, it’s hard to stay festive even with Christmas so close.

And for those with beginning of term exams, a Christmas dinner with revision at the back of your mind is probably not what you had in mind for the holiday spirit.

But don’t worry, we’re all in the same boat, and here are some tips that will help you survive the exam stress this time of the year.

There’s no perfect revision schedule

By the time you’ve come to university, you would have realized that people work best at different times. But during exam periods, the constant comparison between you and the rest of the class can make you forget that.

Talking to an early bird about her revision routine doesn’t mean that you’re starting too late. And that night owl boasting about his all-nighter? It doesn’t mean you’re not working hard enough either.

Everyone has their own preferences. This includes how often you take breaks, where you work best, whether you should suspend your Facebook account and even should you should go to a party this evening? The most important thing is to keep track of how well you’re covering the topics. Don’t forget that!

It’s OK to take breaks

It is closely related to the point above but very important to emphasise, especially for those preparing to have a revision-plagued holiday. Taking breaks or having a trip abroad is allowed. Diligence may be a virtue but so is temperance. So don’t be a Scrooge and do have some fun.

“But there’s so much to revise and there’s never enough time to memorise everything!” A particularly hardworking student might say.

Well, look at it this way. You can’t overwork yourself and get burnt out, spending days looking blankly over your notes. So if you factor in those breaks into your revision schedule, you are much more likely to make sure that you get the most out of the days you do work. Efficiency is key, not raw hours dedicated to sitting down with your books.

For those with exams practically glaring down their faces, breaks can mean just an evening to cool off so that your brain can have some time to consolidate what it has learned. A break when you need it will make sure what you learned stays in your head and keep you going for the next round.

People lie

In addition to a cynical truth, it’s also what people do leading up to exams. Your course mates, people in the year above, your sister, your grandpa. If they said that they have stormed through 8 hours a day without as much as a toilet break, they’re most likely lying to you. It’s a good old intimidation technique or an attempt to become ‘holier-than-thou’.

Even if they genuinely believed that they had been such a staunch reviser, they probably forget to count all those moments they were trying to find the perfect revision playlist, clearing their head with Candy Crush or writing an article for the university newspaper.

This tip also applies to those guys who lean back on their chairs and said, “Oh, that exam? I just revised it the day before. You’d be dumb to fail it.”

Best bet? Trust yourself to assess how you’re doing and only take away what is useful, like the relevance of that last lecture. Only you know whether you should spend more or less time revising.

Take a step back

Tunnel vision is the nemesis of exam revision. That’s when you judge your entire academic performance based on the one single thing you happened to focus your attention on in your panic.

No, you’re not going to fail because you missed all the revision sessions. No, you’re not a failure if you slept in today. And no, you won’t be kicked out of Imperial if you can’t get yourself to revise today after a long solid week.

These things aren’t going to make or break your exams. As long as what you’re doing is getting you closer to understanding your subject, it’s better not to dwell on the details.

Try to look at the wider picture of how you’re doing overall. What if instead of attending those revision sessions, you managed to master a particularly difficult topic? Don’t let that one thing pull everything else down.

Take an even larger step back

Near-spiritual anecdote coming up. When I was an undergraduate preparing for my finals, I remember being so stressed that new veins started sprouting across my temples. I was so stressed I don’t think I could hold a normal conversation anymore.

The evening before my first exam, I gave up revising. As I hopelessly procrastinated, I stumbled across a video about Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut who did a cover of ‘Space Oddity’ in space, talking about earth from the window of the International Space Station.

He said that every single person in the history of mankind had lived and died on that blue globe floating before him. Once you’ve had that perspective, the scale of whatever you face diminishes in comparison. Insignificance is usually scary, but it’s exactly what I needed to be reminded of at that moment.

That reminded me what these exams really were. Just something that most people went through in their lives being as scared and nervous as I was, and for a great majority of those people, it went better than expected.

So if the worst comes to the worst and you feel truly doomed for the exam, just remember that exams don’t determine lives.

You might feel that it does right now, but your worst case scenario is not going to happen.

Exams usually end with a huge sigh of relief and even if it doesn’t, remember that it’s just a termly exam and you’ll have plenty of chance to redeem yourself.

Best of luck!