Yesterday we looked at how to get yourself ready on the morning of your exam – so do check that if you haven’t already. However, if you have, you should be all ready to walk into your exam room feeling awake, full of energy, relaxed, and focussed (all things being relative). This will all help you to perform better during the exam itself, but these tips are not enough alone to get you through. You will certainly need to have done your revision, but you might also want to make sure you don’t make any of the most common exam-room mistakes.
Fortunately, we have a few pointers to help you when you get into the exam itself:
Yeah, it’s pretty basic, but you’d be surprised at how many people forget this most basic point as they start to focus on how they will answer their exam paper.
Try to stay calm as you read the exam questions carefully. Make sure you understand what you are being asked to do and plan how long you want to spend on each answer.
You don’t have to answer the questions in the order they have been written – so give yourself a head-start by answering the questions you feel confident about first. This way you are not only building up momentum and confidence, but also making sure you get some marks down on the paper.
Don’t be tempted to spend more time than you allocated on a particular question. You need to make sure you don’t run out of time before you have answered all the questions and got your full haul of marks. Leave the questions you are unsure about until last – rather than wasting time pondering them you can be earning marks on another question.
It can happen that your brain freezes up – but don’t panic if this happens. Just start writing and details will come to you as you begin to jog your memory.
If you have time, look back over your paper at the end of the exam to check your answers. Don’t waste time by just sitting back if you finished earlier than expected – you may be able to squeeze some extra marks from one of your answers.
Overall, try to stay calm during your exam. The fact is, you are there to show what you can do and there is little you can do to change that now. You might like to think of it as a ‘quiz’ or a ’test’ rather than an ‘exam,’ just changing this word in your mind can take some of the pressure off and help you to relax.
After the exam itself, try to avoid discussing it with your friends. Checking what answers other people gave will have no impact on your paper after the exam – much better to put it out of your mind and move on to the next one!
