Procrastination Hacks: How to Dodge Exam Anxiety

Have you ever noticed that when those big exams loom, your brain suddenly becomes super interested in cleaning your room, reorganizing your sock drawer, or maybe even learning a new TikTok dance rather than hitting the books? Well, guess what? That urge to put off studying might be your brain’s quirky way of waving a little flag that says, “Hey, maybe there’s some exam anxiety bubbling up!”.

The research speaks to something called “evaluation anxiety,” which is when you get all those worried thoughts about how you’ll do on the test or if you get a bad grade. And guess what? That anxiety can be a big reason why we suddenly find a million other “urgent” things to do instead of studying.

The Ultimate Guide to Wellness in Your Health Professional Program

Becoming a student in the health professions comes with hurdles before you even begin, whether it’s making it through pre-med, the MCATs, or even simply the challenges of keeping your grades up while maintaining those resume-building extracurriculars. There’s a good reason that the time leading up to school is so grueling: it helps prepare you to shift into the big league. 

The theme of our guide is connection. Building connections with your work, your peers, and yourself will provide a path through some of the most difficult times you’ll face ahead. Let’s take a look at some of the common challenges students face during the first years of school, and some proven ways to overcome those obstacles.

Mindfulness in Medicine

Medical school can be overwhelming. With 8:00 AM lectures after 2:00 AM study nights, cadaver dissections with the omnipresent taste of formaldehyde, changing from white coat to scrubs to physical exam attire back to scrubs all in the same day, committing intricate biochemical pathways to memory, and coming home to an empty fridge. It’s hard to remember to breathe amidst it all. That’s where mindfulness and meditation come in to play!

Breathing Practices to Calm the Mind Before a Test

So how do you make friends with that stress response? One thing you can do is teach yourself breathing techniques. Respiration and the nervous system are closely intertwined. A stress response can cause your sympathetic nervous system to get revved up which in turn leads to fast breathing or hyperventilation. If you do that for long enough, you start to lose too much CO2. As a result you develop a respiratory alkalosis, in other words, your blood pH rises. So the solution is to simply hold on to some of that CO2 by breathing more slowly and allowing your blood pH to settle back down. By regulating your breathing, you can shift your physiological response to stress and help yourself calmly breathe and mindfully focus through whatever is in front of you.