How to control your nerves before an important exam

Although people tend to say that "you have nothing to worry about as long as you study", us students worry A LOT when we prepare for an exam and, although nerves are good and make us feel "on guard", we must be able to control these nerves to avoid them making us make unnecessary mistakes that later, once you receive the mark, make you feel completely stupid. As I said above, people say that the more you study, the less you have to be nervous but, at least in my case, it is completely the opposite. The more I prepare for an exam the more I feel the pressure and nerves an important exam entails. This, in my opinion, is completely normal because, the more work you put into something, the more you want it to work out. The bad things about big tests and exams is that your preparation is not the only thing that matters, there are a lot of other factors that can make a test go either way and, although many people tend to ignore this, if a teacher has had a bad day and is in a terrible mood, he can give you the most difficult exam you've ever experienced, and that's that.

This is why, when you have put a lot of work into something you strongly desire to get it over with and score the highest mark possible. However, there are ways of controling these nerves and, although unfortunately a button that says "REMOVE NERVES" is yet to exist, we can overcome the nerves and, instead of ignoring them, use them in our favour.


Nerves are often described as a negative feeling that people suffer when they're about to be submitted to situations where they are forced to be under pressure. However, the way I see it, when we feel nervous it is our body that makes us be on guard, we know something hard is coming, so the body makes us nervous so that we are prepared. Once we have acknowledged this, we students should, instead of letting the nerves control us, control the nerves ourselves and turn them into motivation. Lets say that before that difficult history test with that teacher you highly disapprove of, instead feeling the pressure of not knowing how well you are going to do in the test, you are able to change it into motivation; Change the.."Oh I am so nervous...Dont know what Im going to do!" to a ...."I can do this! I am going to demonstrate to the teacher and my family how even though this teacher and me can't stand eachother, I have a spirit of self-sacrifice and that I can get a 10! WOOOOOOHOOOOO!!!".