You've seen many articles talking about test taking, you've seen numerous sources telling you how you should approach tests, you've had people giving you advice on the order you should answer the questions in, and now you have it, right in front of you is an exam with questions you never anticipated and the tools that told you to answer the easiest questions first isn't working anymore because every single one of them are as hard as the other. You have already skipped half of the exam looking for that one question that doesn't need more than three lines of explanation to it, and already you heard pencils and pens scratching on test papers as people all around you begin working. You feel the cold sweat behind your back as you remember that the breakfast you had this morning had too much sugar in it and the coffee you drank was a bit too creamy for you. You look up at the test timer and whoops ten minutes have already gone by and not a mark has been made yet, what are you going to do?
1. Take a Good, Deep Breath
It's proven that when you focus on taking a deep breath you could filter your mind and reorganize your thoughts. You could never begin to come up with a solution when you're worried about so many things so let the fresh air in and have the exhale take all the chaos away. It's also proven that 100% of the people that get good grades on exams breath, so statistically you should be taking in more breaths to guarantee success.
2. Start to Read the Problems
Don't just scan the problems, read them! The time you take to read the problems and then deciding whether it's worth the time is better than diving into a problem before recognizing how hard that problem is. When I say read the problem, I imply that you read it and understand what the problem is asking for and not actually solving it. Go through each problem reading what each of the want and start from there.
3. Pick on the Easy Ones
Many articles and people suggest that you should always aim for the easy points and try the harder ones last so you could get the guaranteed to get the easy points before challenging yourself for the harder ones. Besides that however, doing the easier problems boosts your confidence and right now chances are if there was a window right beside you that's open and the professor isn't looking you'll probably just straight out of that window. With more confidence you get more comfortable and familiar with the problems so you could solve the harder problems easier and recognize the patterns in the problems and begin to remember what the professor said in class even thought you were sleeping half the time in lecture.
4. Don't Doubt Yourself
When you move on from a problem to the next, you'll be doing the second problem and then thinking "Did I mess up a calculation back there?" or "Did I do that problem right?". Stop yourself right there right now. First of all you should be focusing on the problem you're currently working on instead of other things. It's like wondering if you left your stove on back home when you're in the middle of a freeway with cars driving 20 mph over the speed limit. The more you direct your attention away from the things you're doing right now the more likely you'll mess up on the problem you're currently working on. To second that you could always go back to check your work after you're done with the problems you can do. You never want to doubt yourself because this will lead to more doubt and suspicion on your later calculations and thus using more time than you actually need just to recheck on simple arithmetic logic. Don't stop and just go on, there's nothing back there other than self doubt.
5. Finish it Fast
You always see those few people coming out of their seats twenty minutes before the exam time ends and turn in their papers and you just think "dang those people are nerds" and then think "Is this suppose to be easy or am I just stupid?". Chances are the people that finished early are people who are either proficient at the material or doing it fast to avoid the stress. When you take tests, the longer you take doing it the more stress you compile and this is an exponential increase in stress. By the end of the test you might as well drain yourself off in the bathroom with the amount of sweat you have on your back. My advice on this is to just ball it. If there's a question or problem that you really don't know, skip it and turn it in because the longer you sit there, the less of a chance you will be able to figure something out. Just give your honest effort at the problem and turn it in without looking back.
It's never the end of the world to fail an exam and never feel that you're the only one who's failing or that you are the sole reason why you failed that exam. Feel good about yourself that you survived the exam and prepare yourself for the next exam rather than mourning over your grade. Exams are essentially tests that determine how well you understand the material, not a scale to measure how smart you are. The pressure and stress that's there are mostly due to your inner insecurities and doubts about your capabilities compared to others. So the only real way to pass a test is to believe and trust in yourself that you will succeed. I've never studied more than three hours on any single exam or killed myself over a bad exam; just let yourself absorb the experience and move on.
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