Test anxiety is categorized as a psychological condition in which people experience extreme distress and anxiety in testing situations. It's exactly how it sounds, extreme distress and anxiety.
As someone who has suffered from testing anxiety since she can remember, I feel obligated to talk about, because it isn't something that often is talked about. Test anxiety can be mild, such as just being nervous or scared to take a test and second guessing every answer you put down, or it can be pretty severe, like getting physically sick because of the anxiety. Myself, I suffer from severe test anxiety.
I had to take the ACT my junior year of high school and I vividly remember not sleeping at all the night prior. I was up all night researching ways to calm my nerves and things I should know about the ACT. I drove to school not being able to listen to music because it made my mind feel too overwhelmed. Once I got to school, our teachers were trying to "pump us up" by having chants and feeding us breakfast which, I couldn't eat. I don't remember any of the chants, any of the conversations, nothing.
I walked into the classroom where I would sit all morning and some of the afternoon, in dead silence among my peers, taking the ACT; a test that would determine my college career. We started taking the test and I had worked myself up so much just 40 minutes into the test that my nose started to bleed quite a bit. About an hour later during the second portion of the test, I felt sick to my stomach. I tried talking to myself about how I would be fine and I had prepared enough for the test to know I would do okay, but it didn't help. I remember running out of the classroom and getting sick in the bathroom. After a little puke session, I felt better and went back into the classroom to finish that section. After lunch, I got sick two more times while finishing the test. Being as anxious and sick as I was, I ended up crying in the hallway to one of the teachers about how I knew I was going to do poorly on the test and I didn't know why I had such issues with the test.
Test anxiety is real. Just being nervous doesn't cause you to do this, anxiety causes this. Other symptoms of test anxiety include headaches, rapid breathing, shakiness, and feelings of anger, sadness, and nervousness all at the same time. 40 million people suffer from anxiety, 16-20% of high school and college students suffer specifically from test anxiety. You yourself could be suffering, you are just blaming it on yourself. Don't let test anxiety control your ability to complete a test and succeed in school. Getting help is half the battle. And if you see someone looking like they are suffering from test anxiety before a test, help them. Talking to them and making them forget about the test just for a few minutes will help.
While many people experience some degree of stress and anxiety before and during exams, test anxiety can actually impair learning and hurt test performance.