Many students, including myself, struggle with test anxiety throughout their educational careers. In class, we learned that anxiety is having feelings of excessive or unrealistic anxiety or fearfulness about either future events or the current environment you’re in and the stimuli that is present. There are different types of anxiety that a person could have, usually regarding how long their bursts of anxiety lasts for. Test anxiety is mainly getting fearful and anxious about a future event (which is the test). After doing some research on this topic, there are some biological causes. For example, before and during an exam, the body releases the hormone adrenaline to help the body prepare for what is about to happen, which is also known as the fight or flight response. In the past, in PSYCH 100, we have learned that this response is a part of the autonomic nervous system, more specifically the sympathetic nervous system. This response either prepares you to deal with the high stress you’re experiencing or to flee the situation entirely. The fight or flight response helps you deal with the stressful situation so you are prepared and alert. Some symptoms that people with test anxiety can have are nausea, sweating, and shaking body parts. In addition to the biological causes listed, there are also mental causes, such as student expectations. For example if the student believes they will do poorly on the exam, that will most likely increase their test anxiety when it comes time to take the test or if they experienced anxiety for one test, they become fearful that the anxiety may reoccur for future tests, which increases their anxiety by just thinking about the future. While continuing my research on test anxiety, I found a few basic tips to help minimize test anxiety in individuals. The main tip is to make sure you are prepared for the exam and space out your studying over a long period of time so you feel comfortable with all the material, as we were also taught in PSYCH 100. One major aspect to focus on, is eliminating the negative thoughts about the test, because if you continue to have negative thoughts and associate anxiety ridden feelings with testing, the anxiety will persist for every exam you will take in the future. When people always associate negative thoughts and feelings with exams, they will most likely acquire a learned helplessness state of mind. Learned helplessness is when people feel that they have no control over their situation, they may begin to behave in a helpless manner and it could lead to anxiety because you feel as though you cannot change what you’re going through. Sleep and meditation can also help to calm the nerves before an exam.
Work Cited: Cherry, Kendra. “What Causes Test Anxiety and Academic Stress.” Verywell Mind, Verywell Mind, 12 Aug. 2019, www.verywellmind.com/what-causes-test-anxiety-2795366.
This post was very interesting to read because I experience slight test anxiety. I have never had test anxiety before coming to Penn State. The most test anxiety I have ever experienced was definitely this week due to the fact that I had 4 exams. Many of the symptoms that you listed in your post I experienced while in the Pollock testing center this week. I have noticed that I only have slight test anxiety in the testing center because they are online exams- I am more of a paper and scantron exam person. I mostly experience sweating and shaking of body parts; I usually do not get nauseous taking an exam. I also really liked that you included outside research and facts into your post. This expands you knowledge, allowing you to understand the material on a deeper level. In my other class, we learned about the biological processes of anxiety and the side effects of anxiety, so it was fun to read about it again.