All over the Uk there are young people doing their GCSE’s and A’levels. Its that time of year when all 16 year and 18 year olds are feeling the stress of exams and the future implications of the results they achieve.
I remember back to when I was doing my exams at 16, at that time we called them O levels, so it was alot of years ago. I have to admit I dont remember feeling stress, but I also do not recall being bothered at the outcome and so I did not do as well as was expected of me. What I do remember is that during that time I was felt more stress at how aweful the weather was. June, that year, in London was unusually wet and thundery. Lightening storms and very little sunshine were not normal from what I could remember and that irritated me more than feeling the stress of exams.
Some 29 years later, and back in study mode, its a different matter entirely, and I am feeling the stress, I perhaps ought to have felt at 16, now. A lifetime seems to have passed where priorities have changed and things that I used to be chilled about have become alot more important and I am finding myself feeling stress. I am sure I have mentioned that on top of all the ongoing learning I do for my work, I decided around this time last year to undertake a psychology degree. I began it last October, and the only stress I could identify is a sort of irritation at how easy it all seemed.
However, in February I took a couple of higher level modules, hoping to be challenged, but find that is creating stress in me. Still nothing worth having is ever really easy and why should this be an exception. I am really enjoying the course I am doing, the subject matter is interesting, but I find the assignments confusing. Give me a subject and ask me to write an essay and I have no problems, however throw in a few numbers, graphs, convoluted questions and woosh, over my head it goes.
I realise I havent had to think outside of the box for a such a long time, that it makes it an issue of stress, and I am having to cope with thinking in a way that I haven’t had to since I was 18. I had forgotten that exams in the academic world were not an easy ride and that all the learning I have done since then, just tended to test my knowledge, and so I never found myself feeling stress when preparing for a non academic exam.
Ofcourse my exam is not until October, and I only have one,where as the youngsters nowadays are sitting many exams over a number of days and some are even doing more than one in the same day. I feel some sympathy with them, but the nice thing in the majority of cases, is that their commitments will be confined to possibly a part time job, or helping around the house. Coping with stress is not easy, no matter what the age, but it can I suppose me more difficult during these formative years. There will be stress adapting and adjusting to changes in life and in oneself. Then there is the stress of coping with exams. Some students will cope better with the stress than others, either way there are young people all over the country wishing June would be over and looking forward to a summer of no study.
Craniosacral therapy is very useful in coping with stress, it seems to strengthen mental processes and calm the mind. Reflexology is also useful in regulating nervous and circulatory responses to the stress mechanism. Yoga and meditation are also very useful tools in combating stress. T’ai Chi is a meditation in motion practice, and it teaches you to slow down breath and mental processes which help bypass the physiological triggers of stress.
Coping, maintaining and finding ways of dealing with what creates stress inside you during exam time is the best means of battling its consequences. In me stress seems to freeze my mind from thinking clearly and I lose the ability to focus. Realising that I am feeling the effects of stress, I will remove myself, and do something completely different. The other night I went onto you tube and sought out funny videos, things that would make me laugh. I sat down and planned, how I would timetable my study period, and gave myself achievable goals to get me to my one exam in October….:)) Hey it works for me!!…… perhaps I’m being alittle over concerned, but when you look at the amount of reading I have for this one exam, on top of the rest of my life, it might not seem like an over reaction. Stress is not good for any of us, and as you grow older stress becomes a bigger problem, because the coping mechanisms of youth slowly fail us…
Its important for each of us to find our way to coping with stress of any kind, not just the stress of exams. Stress is a big fact of life in modern times, and unless we learn to cope or deal with it we will over time suffer its consequences, becasue out bodies are simply not equipped to handle it day in day out for ever. Find a way that works for you..and maybe the stress related articles on www.touchofhealing.co.uk may be of some use to you.
Thanks for reading.
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