
The end of the school year is coming and with it the exams. Exam stress at Casvi Tres Cantos is a reality. “Between 15 and 25% of the students suffer high levels of anxiety before the evaluations”, says the psychology teacher Giuseppe Iadolo.
What causes this stress, which students are most prone to it, how can it be avoided, and, above all, how do we deal with it? And, above all, how do we do it at Casvi Tres Cantos?
“The best weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over the other”.
Anxiety is a reaction to something stressful. In this specific case to exams. It affects the body and the mind, because when a person is under stress, adrenaline is released, which prepares the person to react to possible dangers. The symptoms it generates are obvious: sweating, accelerated breathing and heart rate. Often, students feed this stress with negative thoughts such as going blank or thinking about the difficulty of the exam.
“Laughter helps balance a stressful situation.”
As Elena Gallegos, a therapist at UNINPSI, says, people who tend to worry about things or are very perfectionist are more likely to suffer from exam stress. It can also be experienced by students who have not prepared for the exam, but want to do well.
Fernando Miralles, professor at CEU San Pablo University, explains in an analysis that the problem lies in the fact that society demands more and more from people. “In high school, students already have to decide what they want to do in the future, so the stress starts earlier”.
There are several strategies to reduce exam stress. Some of them are: