Exam stress is very real; high levels of anxiety are often found in students around exam time. There are many things that attribute to it, many long hours spent studying, sleepless nights and fretting that you won't do well.

How can you reduce exam stress?

There are many ways to reduce your stress levels before a big exam. In fact, there is an entire blog post written by Hiba about helping students deal with exam stress. Hiba collected many different techniques from many different experts in the mental health area, you may even spot my specific technique in there.

What are some techniques in there?

A few of the techniques listed in the blog post are:

• Planning your study habits right
• Plan ahead – separate your assignments
• Study smarter not harder
• Prepare the best way for you (my tip! More on that below)
• Plan out some breaks in your study
• Sleep often and sleep well
• Lessen outside stressors (another tip by me, see below for more details)
• Listen to music

My tips from the blog post

I suggest you give the blog post a read and then come back and read upon my elaborated points.

Prepare the best way for you

It is a common fact that people learn differently and yet, many schools and teachers still only teach one way and expect all students will fit into a specific mould. For example – they will give students chapters to do for homework, no matter if that student can learn via the written word or not.

I encourage you to find the way you learn

For example, I am a kinesthetic learner, meaning I need to touch something to learn. It's why my day job field is myotherapy – a physical rehab job based around massage; I learn about someone's body through touching it and feeling the tissue, but enough of the complicated lingo.

Now you understand how you learn

Once you learn whether you learn via written word, physical touch, or listening, it is easier to understand how you will need to study. Do you need to hear what is written in a book to learn it; many kinesthetic learners can learn this way too.

Once you have found out how to best study for yourself, you will be unstoppable. I wish I had've learnt this trick a long time ago, it would've taken so much stress off my shoulders and made me feel more confident.

Lessen outside stressors

There are many things that can stress your mind and body out. Here comes my myotherapist brain again. Some examples of stressors are; lack of sleep, anxiety, pain at a point in your body, too much noise, exercise or lack of exercise, hunger, loneliness, and so on. The more stress you have in your system, the more stressed out you are going to be.

Sleep is good!

So let's start by reducing the stressors in your body – Start by getting a full night's sleep. Continue this throughout your entire life now, or at least as often as you can. I'm not asking for much, just the best version of you hehe.

Nutrition

Next, you are going to get as many nutrients as you can. Eat as healthily as you can, whilst still getting those tasty treats in. You need to make sure you aren't putting all your stress into a healthy eating pattern that it stresses you out, but you also need to get a good source of protein, carbs and fats into almost every meal.

Noise

Reduce how much noise you at getting at any time. It's common in our lives to be filled with loads of noise; ambience, television, music, car sounds, lawnmowers, and machines in your house and workplace.

How often do you hear absolutely nothing? Now whilst that is virtually impossible, do you see where I am going? Try to lessen the noise around you as best you can.

Ultimately there are many ways to reduce your stress

You just have to be willing to learn about how to reduce your stress and actually do the work to reduce your stress. Remember, you are not alone, everyone gets stressed around exam time, you just need to calm yourself down.