Why We Perform Poorly in Exams?

Many people are guilty of having a poor study habit. In reality, it isn’t too difficult for us break bad habits and learn good ones. In this case, we should remind ourselves how we can do much better in our studies. People who have bad habits during their study sessions won’t get the necessary good marks that get us into a top college. For post-graduate students, good marks could allow them to enhance their careers and they could eventually be paid well. We should always keep this goal in mind and it is possible to put small cards with multiple inspirational messages. Attractive photos should allow us to do much better in school. However, despite the good strategy, we could still perform poorly in exams. This could happen when we are feeling very overwhelmed. In this case, we should look for ways to improve our motivation. We could also perform poorly because we handle the one big project entirely. Because we don’t break a learning project into much smaller sections, it is difficult to get a sense of accomplishment.

Poor performance could also happen when we are distressed by the looming deadline. In this case, we should be able to tackle one task at a time. It is a good idea to create a study schedule, so if we realistically can master the difficult history text in four weeks, then we should create a schedule that allows to do that. However, people who don’t have the proper schedule could find it hard to pace themselves and they don’t have an idea where to start first. Learning one big, thick history book for one day isn’t only overwhelming, it can also be senseless and impossible to do. By breaking up the learning session into four weeks, we can reward ourselves better after completing each section and chapter. People who perform poorly in exams actually don’t have a proper method to reward themselves. One small reward for completing one chapter and a big reward for completing one book could provide us meaningful patterns. Rewards don’t have to be related to material stuff, we could reward ourselves by watching a favourite TV show that we rarely watch when a section is complete or go to a movie theatre when a chapter is completed.

People who perform poorly in exams may not have the proper sense of positive reinforcement. When a project is completed, we should a bigger reward and even bigger when we actually get a good mark from the exam. Other than getting internal encouragement, we should be able to get external rewards after completing the exam properly. If we want to succeed in exams, we should know how to improve the way our brain works. It takes some perfect condition to allow a lot of information to sink into our brain after an intense learning session. In general, it is important to review learning material repeatedly and we need enough rest after each learning session to let our brain encodes the information. In this case, good brain performance requires non-existent mental stress, so we should make sure that we are not distressed when preparing for an exam.