By Flora Davies, Year 10 Journalist Leader

Exams. Stress. The sound of paper flicking and frantic scribbling as 500 students try to compensate for almost 3 terms lack of work. Exams are universally dreaded by the majority of people, with some still occasionally waking up pale and sweaty from a dream in which they sat an A Level, having learnt nothing. Oh, and these people are 45 years old!

Tales of exams are passed down from generation to generation almost as a kind of mythology.

I often hear the occasional “Who’ll take one for the team? If you pass out we’ll all get nines!” as the biology exams are handed out.

But I am not here to give you more gruesome exam tales. In fact I am here to do the exact opposite. Here are exam tips that I wish I had all the way back in Year 7, 2018.

Tip 1: Exams are not in any way meant to catch you out or humiliate you. In fact they are actually meant to help you to understand things that you might struggle with. Try to approach exams as a learning opportunity, so that next time you know what you might need to spend a bit more time on.

Tip 2: Revision is often seen as simply staring at a book, hoping the information will seep into your brain. (In fact I have known people in the past to sleep with textbooks under their pillows!) There are so many ways to revise, they can even be somewhat fun, for example meeting up with friends in the park to revise together and test each other. Or drawing a cartoon of antagonistic pairs or even watching a documentary on the Peasants Revolt.

Tip 3: One of the main reasons people struggle with revision is because they don’t know where to start. Revision lists are extremely helpful for this, you can tick off things you know or feel comfortable with so that you can work harder on things you find more difficult.

Tip 4: The night before exams. Many people stay up late so that they can cram all the content into their brains, but in fact this can be even more harmful. If you don’t get enough sleep the night before you could be too tired to concentrate and be successful. A rule of thumb that many believe is ‘If I don’t know it by 10pm, I am not going to know it by midnight’.

Try to get enough sleep so you feel refreshed and ready. Remember to also drink plenty of water and eat enough. This is all fuel that will get you through a gruesome bit of chemistry or maths.

Tip 5: Finally try to stay relaxed and if not, it’s not the end of the world. These exams are just  practice. It can be really easy during exam season to get swept up into all the drama. Try to focus on yourself and what you need to do. And if you don’t do as well as you hoped you would, it has been a learning opportunity and in reality, it’s good that you got things wrong. That just means that now you know what you need help with.

So, as the clear pencil cases come out and the clocks start, just remember that it’s all going to be okay.