Contents
Surviving the exam: how to save a graduate from a nervous breakdown
Excitement before exams is common. But given the current situation, many of the students’ stress levels are off the charts.
7 2020 June
Associate Professor of the Department of Psychology
On one side
As practice shows, most of all, children are afraid not of failing in the exam, but of the fact that they will disappoint or upset their parents. The second point that causes stress is the low level of preparation. It is combined with the expectations of parents, and with the desire to preserve their face and status in the family and among their peers. The best ones are worried the most: they need to take the highest standards. By minimizing stressors, the child will already feel more comfortable.
Support, not parental control, will help the child to mobilize and get through this important test, and everything else is secondary.
According to plan
The most resourceful time for children is from 9 to noon. If you start studying at 8 am, you can easily master the material by 13 pm. But after 21 hours, resources begin to dry up. With such an intense load, late classes can lead to nervous exhaustion and breakdowns.
The most powerful stress is informational stress, arising from the need to process large amounts of information in a short time. It is best for your child to consciously and voluntarily cut back on online and other distractions to free up time for preparation. But if parents begin to take away gadgets and forcibly restrict access to the Internet, then this will only exacerbate the level of anxiety.
Uncertainty also affects. It is necessary to describe in as much detail as possible the entire procedure for passing the exam, to create a positive vision of the result. This will help calm you down.
Day x
On the eve, give your child a good night’s sleep, you can even give a mild sedative. Drinking water in small sips helps to cope with anxiety. This should be done in the morning immediately after getting up, and for the exam, put a bottle of water with you.
Simple but proven exercises are effective in such a situation. Teach your child at least a few. For example, offer to stand on your toes and drop sharply on your entire foot with support on your heels. There are many nerve endings in the heels. And the simplest movement will produce a quick invigorating effect.
You need to be careful with breathing exercises under stress – they can lead to dizziness or even loss of consciousness.
Or teach your child about ear massage, which can be done at any time – both in transport and while waiting for the exam in the corridor. We grab the ears from above and, moving our fingers along the inside, protrude them, turning ourselves into a Cheburashka. After repeating this several times, we pull the ears by the lobes three or four times in a row. In this simple way, we, by the way, activate our mental abilities.
By the way
They will not simplify the tasks for the exam this year. Although parents worry that schoolchildren cannot prepare properly, education officials disagree with them: the dates of exams have been postponed, which means that graduates have more time to prepare.
Children will take exams at least at a minimum, but in person. In order not to create a danger of infection, the schools will disinfect the classrooms, and the students will have the temperature measured at the entrance. The children will be seated in such a way that there is a distance of at least one and a half meters between them.
But the Ministry of Education has not yet decided on graduation ceremonies – whether to conduct them in person or online. Everything will depend on the epidemiological situation, and now there is no definite answer.