My anxiety affects my life in many different ways. I have anxiety that makes it hard for me to talk to people I don’t know. My anxiety makes me standoffish and very insecure. I have anxiety that makes second-guess whether or not my friends like me. I have anxiety that tells me everything I’m doing is wrong. The anxiety that affects me most at college, is the anxiety that comes over me when I have a quiz or exam. I didn’t realize for a very long time that my anxiety was actually called anxiety. Last year, my freshman year of college, was very difficult for me.
Most of my classes had a quiz every week, my professors do this so that we kept good study habits. Instead of these quizzes helping me, caused me a lot of mental anguish. Every week on the day of my quiz I would have several anxiety attacks. I would pace around my room, unable to calm myself down enough to sit at my desk. I would stare at my texts books and re-read the same information over and over because I just couldn’t absorb any of the information in front of me. I would lay awake at night thinking of everything I could have done to be better, do better, and unable to bring myself to do it each time.
I failed many quizzes and exams last year. I would study for hours, a week in advance to give myself time, and still, I would fail. There is the belief that your grade if reflective of the time you spend learning, but this was untrue. I would go to my professors for help, and they would sit with me each day and go over the material with me, and I still didn’t get good grades. How could this be possible? My professors understood that I was trying to do well, that I wasn’t just being lazy. For this, they did everything they could to help me pass my classes and I’m very grateful. There’s a certain level of anxiety that is good for you, it motivates you to do well. But then there’s a threshold, and anxiety past this threshold impairs you. This level of anxiety inhibits your ability to remember, your ability to rationalize. This is the level of anxiety I felt whenever I walked into a classroom. When I looked down at my exams my mind would go blank, I devoted time to each class and had nothing to show for it.
I tried everything to calm down before exams. I meditated, I listened to classical music, I listened to guided meditation, I took my exams in a private room. None of these things really helped my test anxiety. These things would help my anxiety when it was not academic related if I am anxious because I am feeling overwhelmed I run. If I am feeling anxious while I’m doing homework, then I listen to classical music. But when I am anxious taking an exam I have to push through it. My academic anxiety has improved greatly this year and the only factor that has seemed to change since last year is medication. Maybe it’s because I feel more comfortable at college, but when I’m in class I still feel like I don’t belong. I feel as though everyone sitting around me is much smarter than I am, and that I don’t have a right to be in the class. Rationally, I know this isn’t true, but anxiety doesn’t listen to rationale.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that the only way to cope with anxiety is medication. I know other people who have anxiety and don’t take any medication at all. Personally, I wasn’t able to win the battle with anxiety by myself. I take medication to give me an upper hand, and a most of the time it helps me win the battle altogether. This year I have taken quizzes and exams without anxiety and I do much better compare to when I am anxious.
