Managing Exam Stress Essays

Stress Is the body’s way of responding to the hectic lives most of us live, whether good or bad. The body releases chemicals into the bloodstream, which creates a rush of energy and strength If an individual is feeling stressed. This energy can prove useful if an individual is in physical danger. Because it enables a person’s survival instinct kicks in; it is often described as ‘fight or flight.’ In addition, stress can also have a negative effect on the body, for example: suffering from stress and leaving it unchecked can contribute to health problems, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes.

College is a time of extreme stress due to societal and parental pressures. College students have expectations they have to live up to in order to fulfill and satisfy the needs of both their parents and society. Stress is expressed through a variety of symptoms that can be hazardous to student’s physical and mental health. With such high expectations to do well during college, students may become sleep deprived, which impairs mental capacity, but sleep deprivation is only one of a vast array of symptoms. Stress is present in all aspects of life and there are multiple causes of stress, especially, during the college period which may present itself through many symptoms, but with stress, there are also various coping methods to help students

When put under stress, both humans and baboons have cortisol and adrenaline found in their blood. These hormones are critical for survival, and other physical changes in the body such as a racing heart, increased blood pressure, and quickly responding muscles are all present when the body is put under stress. However, in regard to humans, these same physical responses can occur when the body is not in a life in death situation. Instead, it is common for psychological stresses such as public speaking, taking a test, paying taxes, or driving a vehicle to invoke the same physiological responses as someone in a critical situation. This can be unhealthy for the human body, as many people can get worked up over multiple stressors in one day,

Many students grew up with instructors teaching to the test. As the shift in education moved from learning for posterity towards learning to ace an exam, the instructors were being hounded by the administration to increase positive test scores in their students. The negative reinforcement brought on by the instructors has triggered test anxiety in students well into college (von der Embse, 2015). Add the type A personalities found in the college setting to the learned behavior and anxiety has been a rising problem in college (Beiter et al., 2015).

Society defines stress as anything which forces us to change. Through technical terms stress is defined as “a negative emotional state occurring in response to events that are perceived as taking or exceeding a person’s resources or ability to cope.” To explaining stress researchers came up with the “Cognitive appraisal model”, this system works to tell us whether we believe we have enough resources to deal with the situation without becoming stressed. For instance as a now college student those who have had previous experience taking finales in high school can have less stress than those who have not taken it. This is because they have previous experience with taking the tests and learning how to study while those who have never taken one can become extremely stressed over the unknown of the test. Stress is one of the sub branches that is attached to the world of health psychology. Health psychology is a quickly growing branch that deals with the way the mind and body work together. Psychologists that work in the health field came up with the biopsychosocial model. This model explains the complex interaction with biological, psychological, and social factors.

They concluded that exam stress reduces immune function, potentially leaving the individual vulnerable to illness and infections. Immune function is also affected by psychological variables such as the stress of life events and feelings of loneliness. These long term stressors may make individuals more vulnerable to the added effect of short term stressors such as exams.

Viewed from an evolutionary standpoint, in early times stress caused the stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system resulting in an outpouring of the hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine, and glucocorticoids that were essential to the life-preserving fight or flight reactions of primitive man (Anthony 1988). However, the nature of stress for the individual today is different. It is only occasionally and unexpectedly that one is confronted with overwhelming, life-threatening stresses. Present stresses arise from everyday stresses of work, finances and school. The problem is that the body still continues to respond in the same fashion as primitive times. This makes the large release of hormones very harmful. They can cause an increase in blood pressure, damage muscle tissue, lead to infertility, inhibit growth, damage the hippocampus and suppress the immune system (Carlson 1994). It is therefore, important that individuals learn to control the stresses in their lives. The more detrimental coping behaviors will cause a larger change

Test anxiety is defined as "A fear of failing that you feel before or while taking an important examination, that prevents you from performing as well as you otherwise could on the exam," according to yourdictionary.com. The website mentalhelathy.com, a survey conducted by ChildLine states that 96% of the students surveyed felt anxious or pressured, skipped meals, had problems sleeping , and 14% even drank alcohol because of standardized testing. This is in no way healthy for students. This stress can cause students to perfom poorly on a tes that they know the material for. If students experience test anxiety on a test that determines whether they graduate or move on to the next grade, then the chances of them passing are significantly

Stress is your body’s way of responding to any kind of demand; it can be caused by both good and bad experiences.

This text proposes to display the results of a study that was conducted by selecting a random sampling of students. Information was gathered and scored about their study habits and their anxiety levels at exam time. The goal was to determine whether or not there was a significant level of correlation between the numbers of hours that students studied in relation to the level of anxiety that the students experienced at exam time. As researchers the aim was to disprove the null hypothesis that states there is no correlation between the two variables and to prove the alternate hypothesis that states that the anxiety at exam time is directly

Forty hours… that’s almost two entire days. That is about the total amount of time a student uses to take standardized tests. On top of that, the amount of total time taken to study for those forty hours of exams is unimaginable, not to mention the amount of stress and pressure students have on them to do well. Standardized tests are extreme in many cases, and should be stopped.

Test anxiety is a very common trait that occurs in many people. You have spent weeks studying for the examination, covered every single topic and read every single material having to deal with the upcoming exam. You walk into the classroom, sit down, and retrieve all your materials that you need. The instructor hands out your exam and gives everyone the confirmation to begin. You open up the exam and start reading the first question, hoping to be familiar with the subject. As you read question after question, you realize that you can't recall the answers to anything that you have just read. According to Salend (2011), this is the time that "you start to panic, your chest gets tight, you get sweaty, you start feeling overwhelmed" (p. 58). Many students suffer from this type of anxiety when it comes to taking examinations that can hinder their performance and well being. Proper studying and adequate preparation can help students overcome test anxiety and help improve their performance. Employing

Tet anxiety is a very common thing among American students, especially for those whore are in higher education. This type of anxiety causes psychological tension that students experience before taking test. In the moment of test anxiety students have a strong feelings of failure that is followed by panic and stress pressure. Apparently many studies have showed that test anxiety often causes students to perform worse on the exam. "Test anxiety: Why it is increasing and 3 ways to curb it" by Valerie Strauss and " Anxiety, Self-Efficacy, and College Exam Grades" by Jennifer Barrows, Samantha Dunn, Carrie A. Lloyd are popular and scholarly articles that discuss test anxiety in US higher education and how it disadvantages students.

Stress affects the body in many different ways. Many doctors estimate that stress is involved in more than half of all illnesses (Sapolsky, 21). Stress may cause or prolong an illness or increase its severity. Epinephrine and norepinephrine are hormones that are released during a stress reaction that affect organs throughout the body. As a result from the hormones being secreted, the heart begins to beat more rapidly, muscle tension increases, blood pressure raises, and heavy breathing may occur. This reaction is known as the fight-or-flight response. The fight-or-flight response energizes the body to either confront or flee from a threat. Heredity, learning, and injuries all play a role in determining where or when a stress related illness may occur in a particular individual (Sapolsky, 22).

Based on these findings from research done previously I feel that this study is important. Firstly, we need to understand what causes the stressors and how it affects the individual. For example, if you have an entire university with stressed students, not being productive, not performing well academically perhaps thinking of dropping out of university because of the overwhelming anxiety; it can be detrimental to the institution in terms of status and students in terms of individual realisation. Secondly, we soon have to formulate effective and efficient stress management guidelines as we