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Coping with Exam Panic Attacks?
UniGirlBot asks: "I am a distinction / high distinction student who normally doesn't have any major levels of stress during exams. Today I managed to have a major panic attack during an exam on databases and ended up leaving the room in tears about halfway through a 3-hour paper. This panic attack was an absolute first for me and I now have to begin the special consideration procedure, which I am grateful exists. For the record, I did study enough and the course was something I enjoyed doing. Does anyone out there have any advice on what I could do stop this from happening again, please?" If you've been in this position, how did you recover?
No single test is going to make or break your career/future. It may mean that you don't get your first choice of college or job, but that probably won't matter 10 years from now.
If there is a company that won't look at you because you have a 3.9 GPA instead of a 4.0, you probably don't want to work there anyway. Far more important are the projects and activities you do outside of class. I know I would rather hire someone with a 3.0 GPA and open source development on their resume, than a 4.0 student who hasn't done anything outside of class.
Now, I'm not saying that you should blow off exams, but it is just a test. You will have many more of them in your future. If you blow this one, you can try a bit harder on the next one.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Yep been there too under similar circumstances. I feel your pain. Unfortunely, at least in my case, the first panic attack meant that next time I was in a similar circumstance I was worried more which seemed to help induce another panic attack.
I did a bunch of research online to learn about Panic Attacks. I asked my doctor about them. My doctor offered medication which I declined. In the end I just suffered through so many panic attacks that after a while a panic attack became somewhat anti-climatic. Almost routine. At that point they dissapearred almost overnight.
Your experiences may vary of course. Good luck to you.
whj
P.S. Worse thing though is don't be ashamed or embarrased. That'll make it all worse.
I have no specific advice for your situation, but there are a few possibilities.
The most general is to talk with a psychologist about your experience. It's not a panacea, but you may gain some insight into what led into the attack, and how to cope with the situation if (when) it occurs again.
Next up - make sure you're taking time to relax in your daily routine. It's easy to fall into a pattern of overwork that becomes counterproductive, especially when the situations get grim, like exam time tends to be. Even a simple thing like taking a daily hour long walk can go a long way toward relieving any stress you're feeling.
Also, if you aren't already following a good nutrition plan with attendant exercise, consider starting. Feeling good physically is the first step to feeling good mentally.
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If this is the first instance of you having a panic attack like this without ever having been a "worried" person in the past, then you want to make sure you don't have a diagnosable problem. Personality changes generally aren't so sudden without an underlying pathological condition.
1) Cut out on sugary drinks completely. They're empty carbs that make you jittery during the day and mess up your teeth. The jury's still out on caffiene I like it, but don't OD on the stuff. It's just as hard to focus through caffiene jitters as it is through soft drink jitters.
2) Going to sleep early: Good. Taking drugs to get to sleep early: Bad. I've noticed that if I take something like nyquil I have a much harder time getting up the next morning, no matter what time I go to bed. Unless the exam's at 6am, I wouldn't suggest going to bed any earlier than 9pm, but I wouldn't suggest pushing it much later either.
3) Orange juice good. It's a full day's supply of vitamin C. High protien breakfast also good. While some people prefer steak and eggs, I like steak and steak. Or oatmeal.
4) Exercise also good. A little exercise in the morning always seems to wake me up. If you're on a cool campus you can go straight from your steak and steak breakfast to the gym for a quick round of kick boxing, then you'll be set to face whatever challenges the day brings!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You've been mod'd redundant but I think your comment is actually quite correct, and it's a good bit of how I handled taking exams at University.
Once your at the exam, even the night before, there's nothing you can do that is going to increase your knowledge, so, stop caring. If you fail, you fail, try it again next year or pick a different educational path, if you pass, good job. Sweating over it is just going to reduce your performance, so just answer the questions as far as you can and don't worry about it.
If you don't know the answer, well, move to the next question, don't panic "I don't know this!". If you get to the end of the paper and you have questions unanswered, go back to them and just casually think about it, perhaps you did know after all, but don't panic about it, it's too late for that.
I was the same after exams too, everybody of course asks "how do you think you did". My reply was always "I don't know, and I don't really care", if I passed I passed, if I failed (and I did once, I hated that course), so be it, nothing I could do after the exam would change that.
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Simply stop caring.
:)
BINGO
School doesn't matter. Passing and the degree are all that really count.
Marketable skills and real world experiance matter most.
Get a girlfriend (or boyfriend depending on your preferance), drink some beers, wine or whatever you like and enjoy college, this is your LAST chance. The real world is a lot tougher and a lot less fun until you become a billionare or die
It has been a while before I have sat an exam, but I will second that.
There is a finite amount of knowledge which you can assimilate preparing for the exam. After that you should stop caring for at least a while and leave it to settle. Best of all get shitfaced the second-to-last evening before the exam and sleep over the last day. It is quite easy in most of European Unis where you have around a month long examination session. Essentially you have to get through the stages of care, fear, shitfaced, not care. Once you are at the last stage you perform the best.
This is impossible in most of the US though. Their short examination sessions do not allow this.
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One way that I've seen this phrased is:
After you've prepared the subject, you need to prepare yourself.
I believe some studies have shown that listening to certain types of music (e.g. Mozart) before exams actually results in a boost in results. You need to relax and prime your brain into its high-performance mode where it can regurgitate all the knowledge you've been cramming into it for the last few weeks.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Or a subject like programming, where I already knew some of just about every Algol-like language, so a first or even second semester of Java took maybe a couple of minutes of preparation. That is, I'd sit down in the room, and before the prof tells everyone to shut up and starts passing out the tests, I ask the person next to me things like "What's the Java syntax for a constructor?" And I'd pass.
Don't count on that, though. I was lucky to be so far ahead of the class in my independent study. This CS class had three teachers, one of which was much faster-paced than the other two. The first semester, I got a woman who really can't teach and was incredibly slow-paced, the lab stuff was insanely easy, but the test was much harder. The second semester was just the opposite, though I don't really know what the finals were like, I was gone before then.
Which brings us back to the main point -- I'm not doing great, but I'm a college dropout (first semester) and within a couple of weeks of coming home, I had one part-time job and a couple of bits of contract work.
I don't have any ambitions about money, I only want to make enough to live and occasionally afford toys like a new video card. If my pay per hour goes up, I'll work less and play more. So, obviously this doesn't apply to everyone, but I don't have many regrets about dropping out.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!