Coping with Exams and assignment deadlines

Exams are likely to cause some level of anxiety and stress. A certain level of stress can be useful - the adrenalin can help you to focus and function at a raised level. Too much, and your body starts to shut down - it's the physiological "Fight or Flight" or "Fight / Flee" mechanism at work.  Your mind and ability to concentrate effectively can also flee, so it is not always a physical running away, a psychological running away can be at least as powerful as physically not turning up for an exam or not completing the assignment in time.

There are some basic "looking after yourself" approaches that can help you, whatever your level of preparedness.

1) Plan as far ahead as you can - it's never too soon (and rarely too late until the actual time and day of the assessment) to plan how best to make use of what time you have.

It's no good beating yourself up about how much or how little revision you have done. Concentrate on how best to use the time you have left to revise. Stay in touch with the rational bit rather than allowing the emotional fear to gain control. Spend some of your precious time thinking and planning how best to use the time you have for study and revision.

2) Try to be realistic about what you can do between now and your assessment/exam. It's very tempting to imagine what a super-brain might be able to manage, but keep it real to what you can realistically expect yourself to be capable of.

• Map out the hours days or weeks left and highlight each deadline or assessment day/time/place
• in September, try to get inot good study habits - make an early visit to Study Advice in the Library and mentally set aside time for revision of each week's work, and for each semester in the year ahead.
• Make a timetable with a list of what you'll need to know for your assessment/s.
• Prioritise the most important stuff.
• Reward yourself when you do some useful revision. 
• Don't be afraid to revise the timetable in the light of the diminishing time and what you discover through revision
• Back up all your work on the university "G" drive (for details ask at the computer Helpdesk based in the Applied Science Building). Or send copies as attachements to your own e-mail address on a regular basis. Thieves target students throughout the year, but especially during exams. Your precious laptop/usb stick with all your work on it just might be vulnerable to getting lost (you left it somewhere.... but where??), or suffering a major hard disk crash or other fault.
• Don't leave printing your work out till the very last minute - your printer is likely to  jam, you just may run out of ink or paper at 5am or your printer credit at Uni might be all used up and you cannot afford to buy more at the last minute.

3) Avoid falling into the trap of spending all your time endlessly making and refining lists and not getting down to the real job of revising! - that's procrastination - (from the Latin - meaning putting off till tomorrow) - if you want to understand that better - Andrea Perry's book "Isn't it about time" is really useful, but don't start getting into the week before exams, read it at the beginning of the year or during the vacation.

4) Look after yourself (body as well as mind).

It's no good just expecting that you can suddenly concentrate for very long periods without breaks, and manage on black coffee and Red Bull - it's not likely to work.

• Take some breaks - but be disciplined, not too often and not for too long at a time. Use breaks as a reeward as well as to ease up 
• do a bit of exercise (even walking round the block between bouts of revision helps) - get the oxygen flowing in your system, which helps to clear your head a bit and energise your brain
• you could even chant to yourself the formulae or references you need to remember whilst walking - (but check and recheck they're correct).
• Use 'Post-Its' around places where you will frequently see them with important facts, dates, references or formulae
• Take breaks from your desk or the setting where you're reading/revising , and stretch your arms and legs a bit 
• Try not to exist solely on junk food or sweets and biscuits - have at least one proper meal each day.  Actually planning and preparing food, however simple, is itself beneficial - it's a way of looking after yourself and also acts as an intellectual antidote to overdoing revision - just as long as it doesn't become a displacement activity (doing something else rather than what you should be doing!).
• Sweet food gives you a quick sugar rush, but once that wears off, it tends to leave you feeling a bit "down". Carbohydrates take longer to metabolise, so give you energy over a longer period of time. Marathon runners typically "carbo-blast" an hour or two before they set off with good reason - it lasts the distance! This is especially important on the day of a long assessment/exam when you may be in the exam hall or lab for 2 or 3 hours at a stretch.
• Make the revision varied, and find ways to "play" with it - make it more interesting fro yourself.
• Memory is a strange thing and often what we remember is associated with the place, a colour, a shape or an smell. The context in which learning takes place can also enhance memory - try and link important facts you need to remember with a place, shape, colour, person or experience through visualisation.
• Use different colours and shapes in your revision notes for instance.
• Tony Buzan's book on "Use your head" may help you devise some good learning and remembering strategies - if you've started early enough. Tony's website has some good free resources too: Mind-mapping for instance.

5) Revision should be just that - revisiting what you have already covered. If you have missed stuff along the way, then it's learning it for the first time. If you have missed lectures - try and get the notes from someone else. If there's time, team up with a revision-buddy to bounce what you each remember back and forth. It can be a grind, but all too soon the assessments have come and gone and you will have lost that chance to succeed.

6) Sleep - too little? or too much?

Stress often upsets sleep patterns, and leaves you feeling exhausted after sleeping too little, or after sleeping too much.

• Try and establish a bit of a routine for getting good sleep.
• If you are finding it difficult to get to sleep, have a good think about what you are doing in the couple of hours before you want to get to sleep.
• Try and avoid spending time online late at night.
• Try and distance yourself from feeling you have to keep checking Facebook, or for e-mails, texts and IM's, they can almost always wait a few hours till the next day. If you've an essay to write, consider disconnecting your computer from the internet, and switching your phone off (yes, there is an "off" switch somewhere and the world won't stop if you are not connetced for a few hours).
• Even now, it's worth building in some regular exercise - you could use the Uni's Outdoor fitness walks and exercise machines.
  For next year, consider joining or making better use of the Sports and Fitness Centre on campus, or joining a yoga class (the Students' Union run some).
• If you are feeling sluggish and lethargic in the morning, get out of bed when you wake up, however drowsy you feel, rather than lying there feeling "it's all too much and I wish it would just go away". 
• The night before an exam - try and get a reasonable amount of sleep - switch off your phone - (apart from its alarm function if that's what you are using), use earplugs if you have noisy housemates and try to relax before going to bed.

6) The urge to Party! Whilst it is important not to burn yourself out, ration those opportunities and invitations to go out and party or drink. Not only are you likely to lose valuable revision time whilst in the pub, you may lose some of that night's valuable sleep, and some of the next day with a hangover, or at least through not functioning at your best. Treat time as a valuable resource, along with your brainpower and physical energy.

7) Consider using the Study Advice Service in the Brynmor Jones library, discussing your difficulties with your tutor/academic supervisor and/or Student Counselling to help you devise some more useful coping strategies.