The beginning of exam time often causes stress to a lot of students and sometimes even severe anxiety for some that are extra tense about this stressful time. Effects of exam fever can be even more critical to others than the average student and the stress incurred can affect the grades of those students.
Because of that, you need to take care of your mental health during this time to get optimum results. How can you achieve this? Here are five tips to take care of your mental health during exam time.
Draft a study plan
Studying blindly without purpose or predetermined goals and objectives can make easily throw you off the rails and overburden your brain. On the other hand, organizing the time you have will help you optimize study time and thus derive more benefit from it. For students who can’t easily fit studying to their limited time, setting up a schedule or study plan can help them very much.
To avoid spinning out from exam fever, take out a pen and a paper and then draft a plan. Ensure that you have ample time to study, do homework and still have a social life. Being proactive will make you feel like you have more control over the situation and will, therefore, lower stress levels.
The most important part of drafting a schedule is committing to the schedule you have drafted. To get more time, divide the schoolwork related tasks by asking an expert research paper writer to do some of your work. The trained writing professional can help those students who ask ‘do my assignment’ online. Also, those who finally have finished their college degree still have to face a great deal of stress on graduate entrance exams like GRE, if they wish to pursue graduate studies. Luckily, preparation books for taking the GRE and other types of exams were already made available online to better help in their study plan success.
Practice mindfulness
Mindfulness, which is the practice of living in the moment, can help reduce stress and improve the overall mental wellbeing of students. Using mindfulness, students can easily gain control over their thought process that enables heightened concentration during study time.
Scientific research has proved that sparing only 10 minutes of the day and investing it towards mindful meditation can improve concentration and boost mental performance. Student mental health is important and you need to try out mindfulness to conquer these exam times.
Those are the best recipes of success during exam time and will help students not go into a destructive academic rabbit hole. Simply that means, students will get more out of their study time which will benefit the grades of those students. If you are unfamiliar with this psychological process, you can download some free or paid apps that will guide you through it.
Take quality breaks
Despite all efforts of boosting memory, the human brain can only focus for so long. That could be a bummer for you if you’d like to absorb the entire curriculum in one night. When drafting the study plan, ensure to include time to rest the brain by taking a walk or other recreational method. The rule of thumb of doing so is taking a 20-minute break after an hour of academic rigor.
Whatever method you use to rest, avoid looking into a screen which means avoiding social media, TV and any other digital gadget. Some have found meditating during their breaks effective or alternatively, practicing yoga. Breathing some fresh air by going outdoors is the most effective and will rejuvenate you.
Eat right
Focusing on getting a healthy diet during exams is very important because the brain needs more nutrients to function optimally. Eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and nutritious foods with antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins. Don’t shy away from leafy vegetables and 100% fruit juice and increase the intake of grains to get more vitamin B. The fastest way to get your daily nutrients fulfilled is to take a supplement, check it out Organifi Green Juice here!
Fish is also the best food to increase your cognitive function and memory. Include yogurts and eggs to the healthy diet you have drafted to relieve stress. Avoid coffee intake at all costs because the caffeine will make it hard for the body to deal with all the stress. Go for the green tea to boost focus in this stressful period and to make it be calmer.
Rest enough
A lot of students have given way to the trap of spending long nights studying with the intention of getting higher grades. It is really tempting to stay up all night and cram everything you are going to write on an upcoming exam but this is damaging. Not getting enough sleep can cause even more stress and instead of getting much-needed rebuilding and rest can cause anxiety.
To avoid being a victim of this, get enough sleep and set a predetermined bedtime. Set your bedtime with the intention of getting 8-9 sleeping hours a night. If you are feeling tired during the day, don’t be afraid to rest and rejuvenate your body and mind.
The bottom line
These mental health tips that improve your mental function oppose some norms people have grown to love. Because of that, quitting some of those tasks can be very hard but will benefit you very much. The whole idea is to be calm and stress-free during exam times to get better grades. Above doing all the other things outlined here, get enough rest to have an optimally functioning brain. If you find yourself still struggling after implementing the above mentioned tips and it is affecting your day to day life, it’s worth looking into online therapy as an option to help you get through this part of your life. You’ll feel better for it and should be proud of yourself for recognizing the need to reach out.