How To Manage Stress During Final Year Examination

Stress is the automatic and natural response of the human body to situations that can be threatening or challenging. This entails a state of personal over activation in different real situations that the human being evaluates or considers as excessive and that appear in conditions where there are scarce resources or solution skills. For example, it may appear in the case of students due to an overload in academic tasks when there is very little time to complete them.

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Being a student at present time means living in a state of constant pressure generated by a series of factors that are related to both the academic environment (the degree of difficulty of the subjects, the expectations of the teachers, the number of exams and their degree of difficulty, the pressure to maintain scholarships) as well as the non-academic one (family pressure, personal aspirations, economic difficulties). Often, these pressures on students can affect their emotional balance and their mental health (by which we understand emotional, psychological, and social well-being, which affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. There are studies that support previous statements, arguing that students are subjected to different types of stressors. Among these stressors we can find the pressure of academics with an obligation to succeed, an uncertain future and the difficulties of integrating into the system. Other sources of stress that students face are social, emotional and physical and family problems that may affect their learning ability and academic performance.

STRESS

Stress is defined as- “stress is a particular relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well-being”. Stress is the experience or condition that results (anxious or threatening feelings) when we interpret or explain a situation being more than our coping resources can handle. We can say that — when students assess their preparations for the board exam and find that -it is not up to the mark or expectations; they feel stress. It can be experienced by both types of students- High as well as a low performer.

Stress is your body’s way of responding to any kind of demand or threat. When you feel threatened, your nervous system responds by releasing a flood of stress hormones, and including adrenaline and cortisol, which rouse the body for emergency action. Your heart pounds faster, muscles tighten, blood pressure rises, breath quickens, and your senses become sharper. These physical changes increase your strength and stamina, speed your reaction time, and enhance your focus.

This is known as the “fight or flight” stress response and is your body’s way of protecting you. When working properly, stress helps you stay focused, energetic, and alert. In emergency situations, stress can save your life giving you extra strength to defend yourself, for example, or spurring you to slam on the brakes to avoid an accident. Stress can also help you rise to meet challenges. Stress is what keeps you on your toes during a presentation at work, sharpens your concentration when you’re attempting the game-winning free throw, or drives you to study for an exam when you’d rather be watching TV. But beyond your comfort zone, stress stops being helpful and can start causing major damage to your mind and body.

CAUSES OF STRESS

The most frequent reasons for “stressing out” fall into three main categories:

1. The unsettling effects of change

2. The feeling that an outside force is challenging or threatening you

3. The feeling that you have lost personal control.

Life events such as marriage, changing jobs, divorce, or the death of a relative or friend are the most common causes of stress. Although life-threatening events are less common, they can be the most physiologically and psychologically acute. They are usually associated with public service career fields in which people experience intense stress levels because of imminent danger and a high degree of uncertainty — police officer, fire and rescue worker, emergency relief worker, and the military. You may not plan to enter a high-stress career, but as a college student, you may find that the demands of college life can create stressful situations. Notes some of the more common stressors for college students:

• Increased academic demands

• Being on your own in a new environment

• Changes in family relations

• Financial responsibilities

• Changes in your social life

• Exposure to new people, ideas, and temptations

• Awareness of your sexual identity and orientation

• Preparing for life after graduation.

STUDENT ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

Academic performance is the measurement of student achievement across various academic subjects and also their undergraduate projects. Teachers and education officials typically measure achievement using classroom performance, graduation rates, and results from standardized tests.

The term ‘academic performance’ has been described as the scholastic standing of a student at a given moment. It refers to how an individual is able to demonstrate his or her intellectual abilities. This scholastic standing could be explained as the grades obtained in a course or groups of courses taken. Performance is a measure of output and that the main outputs in education are expressed in terms of learning, that is, changes in knowledge, skills and attitudes of individuals as a result of their experiences within the school’s system. Thus, in determining academic performance, grades could serve as prediction measures and as criterion measures.

Academic performance therefore is largely identified by a range of statistical indicators. Performance is the level of attainment of a person in an examination, that is, how an individual is able to demonstrate his or her abilities in an examination. Hence, Performance has been regarded as a measure of educational output.

HOW STRESS AFFECTS STUDENTS

Students are experiencing high levels of stress in many areas of their life. The combination of a busy life with education is causing stress and depression. Minimal stress is beneficial and may result in excellent performance. However, uncontrolled stress can lead to exhaustion, depression and several other sicknesses. The stress that students experience can test their ability to cope and their ability to adapt. The impact of stress on students can be looked at from various angles. Stress affects students academically, socially, physically and emotionally.

Students are facing various academic problems in today’s highly competitive world, which includes exam stress, lack of interest in attending classes, and inability to understand the topic. Academic stress is the major cause of stress among adolescents and may result in low self-esteem. Most of the psychological problems such as depression and suicide occur as a result of low self-esteem. The magnitude of academic stress among the public school students was significantly higher while the level of adjustment of government school students was significantly better. However, reverse but significant relationships between academic stress and adjustment have been found for both the student group and each school type whereas students in the first year experienced higher degree of academic stress in comparison to the students in the third year and female students perceived more academic stress in comparison of the male students.

STRESS MANAGEMENT AMONG FINAL YEAR STUDENTS

Stress management has traditionally been governed by three conceptual aspects: stress as a stimulus; stress as a response, and stress as person-environment interaction. Stress as a stimulus refers to scenarios that cause discomfort and alter or can alter the organism. These situations or events, called stressors, can be framed in different scenarios (examinations being some of them). Stress as an answer it is the physiological or psychological response that an individual manifests when facing an environmental stressor. The answers that occur in the individuals are hormonal, to which organic, functional and somatic stress reactions correspond. Stress as a stimulus-response interaction it is considered as a stimulus-response relationship, felt by the individual as threatening or overflowing its possibilities and threatening its wellbeing. The increase in the stress response depends mainly on perceptual aspects. The physiological activation triggered by the subject’s evaluation of the situation and of their coping skills (primary and secondary evaluation) highlights, once again, the importance of cognitive aspects as determinants of the stress response.

Stress can occur before and during examinations and can have lasting negative impacts on the self-esteem of the student. Stress before and during examination is experienced by many normal students and the signs are easy to notice: irregular sleep, feeling of tiredness, isolated or sad, feeling ache all over, suffer from stomach upset, feeling of restlessness or leading to a condition where you are not able to recall whatever you studied.

Stress before the exams not only affects the academic performance but it is related to the emotional and health status of the students. Therefore the exams stress, together with the lifestyle of the students that in exam periods is modified can produce some unhealthy habits — excess in the consumption of caffeine, tobacco, psychoactive substances and even, in some cases, ingestion of tranquilizers — all the above, in the long run could lead to health disorders.

The academic success of a student during a study program is determined by continuous and summative assessment. The summative assessment of the students is done at the end of each semester, in the examination session, through oral, practical or written evaluation tests. Although exams are the same for all students, the way they relate to them and the level of stress experienced differs from case to case. However, cognitive processes for stress mediate the relationship between stressors and stress reactions. In this case, the cognitive processes include the estimation of the value of the stressors and the selection of coping strategies to cope with stressors. The coping strategies used may vary: approach and avoidance strategies, problem and emotion focused coping strategies, and behavioral and cognitive strategies. Most students perceive the time of the exam as something threatening and experience an increased anxiety state in front of it.

In general, any difficult test subjects the candidates for two situations: the intrinsic difficulty of the questions and the possible distortion level of anxiety. It has been proven that while a moderate increase in the level of anxiety can be useful if motivates the student to increase their efforts and to focus their attention on the content of the test, a greater increase in anxiety may produce unsatisfactory results. Therefore, activities to cope with stress included talking to family and friends, leisure activities, and exercising. Less desirable coping strategies were drinking alcohol, smoking, and using illegal drugs.

CONCLUSION

The stress associated with exams can be diminished by using coping strategies that can intervene before, during and after exams. These coping strategies can be developed and practiced over time. Some of them are related to the students’ lifestyle, while others are related to academic life and its specific requirements. There are currently few activities within the university aimed at familiarizing students with coping techniques before, during and after examination periods. This is one of the issues underpinning our recommendations: organizing, within the university, work-shops to address stress management; promoting a balanced lifestyle for students, that should combine academic demands with a healthy lifestyle. I recommend students to visit uniprojectmaterials.com to get more information about stress management techniques