Preventing Burnout This Exam Season

You might be in for the long haul when you begin revision for your end-of-year exams. My experience with exams as a Statistics student is that they are often sporadically placed across Term 3, often beginning in the first week and ending about eight weeks later.

Finding ways to relax and enjoy your term whilst sitting and studying for exams is so important for your mental health and, as I have found, your overall exam performance.

Burn-out is the feeling of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. Exam season often requires a lot of persistence, resilience, and private study, and as such you need to make sure you are looking after yourself as you’re working hard. If you’re experiencing fatigue, increased procrastination, self-doubt and have a generally negative outlook you may be burnt out. I have certainly related to these feelings and symptoms in previous exam seasons. These are the techniques I use to maintain a healthy head during exam season.

Foster a good relationship with yourself

The only person who can really know how you are feeling is you! The first step is to realise when you may be feeling like you are burnt out and take it seriously. To take care of yourself you need to try out self-care. Before exams start, I like to create a healthy routine for myself, which involves getting outdoors regularly, maintaining three good meals a day, and taking rest periods every day (often the evening). Routines, such as what time you set your alarm for the morning, when you take mealtimes and setting a time to turn off from work, help create a structure to your day which provides benefits to your health. I found routines also provided me comfort in my exam season, a regular pattern I could follow every day. Hopefully if you can implement a routine before exam season you can keep it going when Term 3 becomes busier and maybe a little more stressful.