By Paris Gill, Content Team Contributor

The sun is finally out, it’s just about getting warmer, and summer is upon us. But for students like myself, May and June are the worst times of the year. The summer exam periodis an incredibly stressful time of year for those in education, and it can be very overwhelming swimming through the mounds of deadlines and anxiety-inducing situations of exams. Unfortunately, this stress doesn’t end come the end of education. The dreaded deadline pressures are something that extend wide into the future, in the workplace and life generally. 

But fear not! There are some ways of reducing the tension and stress surrounding the exam and the deadline which I have discovered over the many years of practicing how to stay cool and calm before the summer holidays. 

There are many different types of deadline anxiety, which I have personally noticed in myself and when talking to peers about what stresses them the most. Broadly, these consist of: 

• 1. Anxiety around the importance of a deadline
• 2. Anxiety because of many deadlines at the same time
• 3. The anxiety of feeling unprepared

1. The Importance of a Deadline

In a school setting, your GCSEs and A-Levels/BTECs might be the most important exams you’ve ever sat. Goals for the future, either specifically getting into a college, university or workplace, or the general desire to do well, can make these exams seem incredibly daunting to sit. As a result, there may occur a form of self-sabotage with revision paralysis, where either nothing is going in or, being overwhelmed, you don’t even know where or how to start studying. 

For after university or in a job setting, an important deadline may mean others rely on you to meet it with precision and accuracy, or your reputation may be held to the standards to which you complete your work. Again, the amount of pressure then put on this deadline is astronomical.

There should therefore be an exercise of perspective when completing any sort of “important” deadline. By focusing on purely the task at hand and not worrying about the bigger picture, this at first may seem counter-intuitive. However, what I have realised by practicing this technique is that it draws mental energy away from worrying about the “domino effect”, and instead I can better direct my efforts to achieving this task or deadline as an isolated assignment. By focusing on the bite-sized chunks rather than the massive overthought-out picture of importance, the pressure on each individual task decreases.

Additionally with exams, the phrase “what will be will be”, although cheesy, has kept me level-headed through a lot of stressful times! If, for example, I had done better in my Chemistry GCSE than I did, I might have taken it for A-Level and, like a lot of my friends, hated it and dropped it immediately! But because it didn’t initially work out like I wanted it to, in the end I was better off for it. 

2. Too Many Deadlines

Multiple exams or deadlines at the same time can become super overwhelming to balance and figure out how to prioritise and prepare for them. My dissertation and final project for a different module were due 2 days apart, and so I had to balance my spring holidays between doing both to an equally high standard, knowing they would influence my graduating grade. That put a lot of pressure on doing them both well and submitting them on time! 

This is why I have sworn by a study timetable ever since my schoolyears. I now pride myself on good time management skills, but this is only through years of practice in balancing priorities and knowing where to direct my energy. With multiple coinciding deadlines, it’s really important to maximise efficiency and energy so you don’t get burnt out.

Knowing how you work best can really help with this, exams or work deadlines. For example, if you can only focus on one thing at a time, allocate a couple days to each topic or project to fully immerse yourself in that task. On the other hand, if you need to do a little bit of everything, schedule a few different tasks to work on each day. 

The length of time and time of day for productivity is also useful to figure out. The Pomodoro method, where you workfor 25 minutes and break for 5, can really help some people stay focused throughout the day. For me, however, I like to get carried away with work and not interrupt my flow, so turning off my phone and sitting in a library for a couple hours works better for me. I also study much better in the mornings, but a lot of students enjoy working late into the night – it depends on your preference!

3. Feeling Unprepared

Feeling unprepared or out of time is usually my biggest anxiety surrounding an upcoming deadline. As a busy student or someone with a lot of different work tasks, a deadline with a short amount of prep time, or a task which has become bogged down with the millions of other things to complete, can cause anxiety and frustration upon actually reaching the deadline. 

This feeling was increasingly common this year when preparing for job interviews, particularly moving to a field I’m not currently in. As an English student who was interviewing for legal jobs, being the only non-law student at assessment days, or not having full access to certain resources, added an extra level of imposter syndrome to these already-stressful environments.

My advice for feeling unprepared isn’t to prepare 1000% and panic if you haven’t, but allow yourself the grace to lean on what you know and admit what you don’t. No one is perfect, but admitting this will allow you to take some of the pressure off of the deadline and just prepare what you can. You’ll find that with a calmer attitude and less pressure on being perfect, you might just do better than you think!