How can I devolp a tolerance for acedemic pressure?

I’m an insensitive piece of shit, so I don’t feel too much pressure. I don’t advice you that.

I’ve seen people getting too excited and panicking over tests and exams. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: people get so scared they’re gonna fail they lose all concentration and focus, forget everything they know, and actually do fail.

Ergo, do everything to come to exam relaxed. Meditate, sleep well, study smarter instead of harder (don’t cram or learn by heart, that never works), work on self-confidence.

Keep in mind that failing an exam is not the end of the world. If you fail, you can still ask to see your test and realize what you’ve done wrong, and then work on improving for the next time. In that sense, failing may even be useful, since you’d get a clear view of what you don’t know.

There’s a good and a bad side to everything. If you come with a mindset that even a failure can be useful, you basically convince yourself you’re in a win-win situation. Learn to make use out of every possible outcome, and stress of failing will be much lower.

Try thinking of it this way: a successful person is in school to learn.

The goal is not to get the grades, it is to learn the subject. Tests are a means to demonstrate you have learned the subject. If you focus on the learning and not on “succeeding”, you will do well.

Can you go to school part-time, maybe taking two classes per semester? If that works out, you could switch to full time.

What were your study habits like? You need a certain amount of self-discipline to set aside a part of each day for studying. Create a plan and try to stick to it. Be realistic. Can you do this? Think of it as an experiment. If you succeed, that is great. If not, then maybe you are not cut out for academics and will need a Plan B, and that is also okay. You need to accept yourself for who you are.

One technique that sometimes works – and it can be fun to do regardless of whether it “works” or not – is to imagine “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Be outlandish in this exercise of imagination:
– I could be hit by a meteor while taking a test on astronomy. (Well, that could happen during math class, too, or even English lit.)
– If I study biology, I could accidentally invent and then contract some hideous and slowly lethal disease.
– If I study oceanography I could be eaten by a shark.
– I might be so nervous while taking a test that I wet my pants.

… and so on.

Maybe some of those are, in fact, too close to the mark, and instead of making you smile or laugh you start to think, “That could really happen! I do get nervous enough that I could wet my pants!” Speaking as one who was too scared to raise a hand in class and ask for permission to go to the bathroom in fourth grade and did wet his pants – in fourth grade! – I sympathize completely.

But those are the ones to attack even more relentlessly. Make even more and more creative imaginations of “what could happen if…” And if you come across one that you simply can’t – in the end – smile your way past, such as if you really are afraid of incontinence due to nervousness, then you need to develop a coping strategy to deal with this real problem: adult diapers, for example, or “no drinking before test days” (you’ll live, even if you have to go a full day without drinking; it will be uncomfortable, but you’ll manage just fine – and have a win at the end of the day).

But just making the list – and the more outlandish and creative, the better – can be relaxing and fun in itself. You could make it a social thing, where you invite others to participate. And you might eventually realize that most fears, most of the time, are just as groundless as the fear of being eaten by sharks or hit by meteors. Yeah, those things actually happen, and it’s pretty awful when they do, I guess, but that’s not often, and not worth worrying about.

Maybe this advice is contra-indicated for someone with actual anxiety issues; I wouldn’t know about that. So if you try something along these lines and it actually makes your anxieties worse, then talk to a professional about it. But this can actually work for a lot of people.

Start with something small – but do make a start. Ruminating will get you nowhere. Use your counselors to process feelings.

Babe Ruth had to strike out a whole lot of times while hitting all of those home runs. Did he look at all worried to you ?

Relax. Before you know it, you’re going to be dead.

We all are…...