Most of us hate tests, but we all must take them at some point or another. If you are trying to become an attorney you will have to take many tests to achieve your goal. While you might think that we all cope with them in the same way, this is unfortunately not true as many people suffer from test anxiety.
That is why we decided to take a closer look at what test anxiety is, its symptoms, and its causes. We will discuss how to beat test anxiety, ensuring you perform at your peak on test day.
What is test anxiety?
If we want to know how to beat test anxiety, we need to first understand what it is. Test anxiety is a psychological condition that causes people to experience extreme anxiety and distress in testing situations. It is a type of performance anxiety that relates specifically to tests and can cause the affected person to not perform well.
While test anxiety is a psychological condition it is not considered a mental health issue. This is because a mental health issue is defined as a condition that affects your behaviour, emotions, relationships, and state of mind, and impacts your daily functioning. As test anxiety is limited to test days it cannot be defined as a mental health issue.
This doesn’t mean that people suffering from it aren’t negatively affected as test anxiety causes an array of symptoms in affected individuals. These include cognitive, emotional, and physical symptoms. Some of these symptoms include the following:
- Cognitive symptoms: Can include overthinking, trouble concentrating, blanking out, negative thinking, and more.
- Emotional symptoms: Can include shame, disappointment, fear, anger, guilt and more
- Physical symptoms: Can include dizziness, headache, nausea, shortness of breath, high heart rate, and more.
If you experience these symptoms on test days you may suffer from test anxiety.
What causes test anxiety?
To learn how to beat test anxiety we need to understand what causes it. Test anxiety is widely believed to primarily be caused by the following three things:
- Fear of failure: When the pressure is on for us to perform well, the fear of failure can overcome us causing severe anxiety.
- Lack of preparation: Feeling ill-prepared for the test is also a common cause of test anxiety.
- Poor test history: Poor performance in past tests can increase anxiety during the next test. This is unfortunately where test anxiety can create a vicious cycle.
While there are other causes of test anxiety these three are the most common and considered the largest contributors.
How to beat test anxiety
Now that we all have a better understanding of what test anxiety is, its symptoms, and what causes it, we are ready to look at how to beat test anxiety.
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Prepare well
As lack of preparation is one of the primary causes, it seems obvious that preparation plays a vital role in how to overcome test anxiety. Being well-prepared for your test will put your mind at ease and help to prevent anxiety as you can face the test with confidence, sure of your ability to perform well. Preparedness is so important that there is even an attorneys’ exam training course offered by the Gawie Le Roux Institute of Law, to help aspiring attorneys be better prepared for their exams.
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Positive attitude
While a positive attitude is a common platitude for success it can help to overcome test anxiety. This is because anxiety thrives with negative thinking, and negative self-talk, which leads to a downward spiral of anxiety and negativity.
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Stay healthy
A busy test schedule will often cause us to neglect our physical health, which will only cause more stress to our body and mental well-being. It is important to exercise regularly, eat nutritious meals and get adequate sleep to help keep our stress levels to a minimum.
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Utilise relaxation techniques
If you suffer from test anxiety, or even if you don’t, it can be beneficial to learn a few relaxation techniques like deep breathing, meditation, and progressive muscle relaxation (PMR). You can then use these techniques in the weeks before or during the testing situation as needed to help you relax and overcome your test anxiety.
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Expect setbacks
As test anxiety is partially caused by poor test history it is important to watch how you mentally frame setbacks. It is best to remind yourself that there are always obstacles along the way and one bad result doesn’t mean you can’t improve. It is important to visualise your future success and downplay your past failure to help you overcome test anxiety.
We hope this article has helped you better understand test anxiety. Hopefully, you can now face every test while remaining cool, calm, and confident.
Do you need to take the attorneys’ admission exams? We can assist you with this course.