Chapter 6: Memory, Studying and Test-taking

Introduction
Student Profile
“I didn’t have to study much for tests in high school, but I learned really quick that you have
to for college. One of the best strategies is to test yourself over the material. This will help
you improve your retrieval strength and help you remember more when it comes to the
test. I also learned about reviewing your graded tests. This will help you see where you
went wrong and why. Being able to see your mistakes and correct them helps the storage
and retrieval strength as well as building those dendrites. Getting a question wrong will
only improve those things helping you remember the next time it comes up.”

—Lilli Branstetter, University of Central Arkansas

About this Chapter

By the time you finish this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
• Outline the importance of memory when studying, and note some opportunities to
strengthen memory.
• Discuss specific ways to increase the effectiveness of studying.
• Articulate test-taking strategies that minimize anxiety and maximize results.
Kerri didn’t need to study in high school. She made good grades, and her friends considered
difference her lucky because she never seemed to sweat exams or cram. In reality, Kerri did her
between
high studying during school hours, took excellent notes in class, asked great questions, and read
school the material before class meetings—all of these are excellent strategies. Kerri just seemed
and to do them without much fuss.
college
strategies Then when she got to college, those same skills weren’t always working as well. She
discovered that, for many classes, she needed to read paragraphs and textbook passages
more than once for comprehension. Her notes from class sessions were longer and more
involved—the subject material was more complicated and the problems more complex
than she had ever encountered. College isn’t high school.
It makes sense that, the better you are at studying and test taking, the better results you’ll
see in the form of high grades and long-term learning and knowledge acquisition. And the
more experience you have using your study and memorization skills and employing
success strategies during exams, the better you’ll get at it. Once you transition into a
work environment, you will be able to use these same skills that helped you be
successful in college as you face the problem-solving demands and expectations of
your job. Earning high grades is one goal, but true learning means committing content
to long-term memory.

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6.1 Memory
Questions to consider:
• What’s the difference between working and short-term memory?
• What obstacles exist to remembering?
• When and how should you memorize things?
Memory is one of those cherished but mysterious elements in life. Everyone has memories,
and some people are very good at rapid recall, which is an enviable skill for test takers. We
know that we seem to lose the capacity to remember things as we age, and scientists
continue to study how we remember some things but not others and what memory means,
but we don’t know that much about memory, really.
Nelson Cowan is one researcher who is working to explain what we do know about
memory. His article “What Are the Differences between Long-Term, Short-Term, and
Working Memory?” breaks down the different types of memory and what happens when
we recall thoughts and ideas. When we remember something, we actually do quite a lot
of thinking.1xiii
We go through three basic steps when we remember ideas or images: we encode, store,
and retrieve that information. Encoding is how we first perceive information through
our senses, such as when we smell a lovely flower or a putrid trash bin. Both make an
impression on our minds through our sense of smell and probably our vision. Our brains
encode, or label, this content in short-term memory in case we want to think about it
again.
If the information is important and we have frequent exposure to it, the brain will store
it for us in case we need to use it in the future in our aptly named long-term memory.
Later, the brain will allow us to recall or retrieve that image, feeling, or information so
we can do something with it. This is what we call remembering.

Working Memory
In working memory, you have access to whatever information you have stored in your
memory that helps you complete the task you are performing.

Short-Term Memory
Short-term memory is a very handy thing. It helps us remember where we set our keys
or where we left off on a project the day before. When you go grocery shopping, do you
ever choose a product because you recall an advertising jingle? You see the box of cereal
and you remember the song on the TV commercial. If that memory causes you to buy that
product, the advertising worked.

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Harvard psychology professor George A. Miller in 1956 claimed humans can recall about
five to nine bits of information in our short-term memory at any given time. Considering
to increase the vast amount of knowledge available to us, five to nine bits isn’t very much to work with.
the capacity To combat this limitation, we clump information together, making connections to help
us stretch our capacity to remember. Many factors play into how much we can remember
Factors thatand how we do it, including the subject matter, how familiar we are with the ideas, and
affect
memorizationhow interested we are in the topic, but we certainly cannot remember absolutely
everything, for a test or any other task we face. As such, we have to use effective
strategies.

Activity
Consider this list of items. Look at the list for no more than 30 seconds. Then, cover up the
list and use the spaces below to complete an activity.

Baseball Picture Tissue Paper

frame clip
Bread Pair of dice Fingernail Spoon
polish
Marble Leaf Doll Scissors
Cup Jar of sand Deck of cards Ring
Blanket Ice Marker String
Without looking at the list, write down as many items as you can remember.

Now, look back at your list and make sure that you give yourself credit for any that you got
right. Any items that you misremembered, meaning they were not in the original list, you
won’t count in your total. TOTAL ITEMS REMEMBERED _______________________.

There were 20 total items. Did you remember between 5 and 9 items? If you did, then you
have a typical short-term memory and you just participated in an experiment, of sorts, to
prove it.

Now, let’s revisit the items above. Go back to them and see if you can organize them in a
way that you would have about five groups of items. See below for an example of how to
group them.

Row 1: Items found in a kitchen

Row 2: Items that a child would play with

Row 3: Items of nature

Row 4: Items in a desk drawer/school supplies

Row 5: Items found in a bedroom

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Cup Spoon Ice Bread

Baseball Marble Pair of dice Doll Deck of cards

Jar of sand Leaf

Marker String Scissors Paper clip

Ring Picture frame Fingernail polish Tissue Blanket

Now that you have grouped items into categories, also known as chunking, you can work
on remembering the categories and the items that fit into those categories, which will
result in remembering more items. Check it out below by covering up the list of items again
and writing down what you can remember.

Now, look back at your list and make sure that you give yourself credit for any that you got
right. Any items that you misremembered, meaning they were not in the original list, you
won’t count in your total. TOTAL ITEMS REMEMBERED _______________________. Did you
increase how many items you could remember?

Long-Term Memory
Long-term memory is exactly what it sounds like. These are things you recall from the past,
such as the smell of your elementary school cafeteria or how to pop a wheelie on a bicycle.
Our brain keeps a vast array of information, images, and sensory experiences in long-
term memory. Whatever it is we are trying to keep in our memories, whether a beautiful
song or a list of chemistry vocabulary terms, must first come into our brains in short-term
memory. If we want these fleeting ideas to transfer into long-term memory, we have to
do some work, such as causing frequent exposure to the information over time (such as
studying the terms every day for a period of time or the repetition you performed to
memorize multiplication tables or spelling rules) and some relevant manipulation for
the information.
We learn the lyrics of a favorite song by singing and/or playing the song over and over.
That alone may not be enough to get that song into the coveted long-term memory area of
our brain, but if we have an emotional connection to the song, such as a painful breakup
or a life-changing proposal that occurred while we were listening to the song, this may
help. Think of ways to make your study session memorable and create connections with
the information you need to study. That way, you have a better chance of keeping your
study material in your memory so you can access it whenever you need it.

Obstacles to Remembering

1) Lack of Sleep
You have so much to do! All that reading, all those papers, all those extra hours in the
science lab or tutoring center or library! When you consider everything you need to attend
to in college, you probably won’t be surprised that sleep is often the first thing we give up.
That seems reasonable—just wake up an hour earlier or stay up a little later. But you may
want to reconsider picking away at your precious sleep time.

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Sleep benefits all of your bodily functions, and your brain needs sleep time to dream
and rest through the night. Lack of sleep impairs judgment, focus, and our overall
mood. Do you know anyone who is always grumpy in the morning? A fascinating medical
study from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) claims that sleep deprivation is
as dangerous as being drunk, both in what it does to our bodies and in the harm we may
cause to ourselves and others in driving and performing various daily tasks.56 xiv
If you can’t focus well because you didn’t get enough sleep, then you likely won’t be able
to remember whatever it is you need to recall for any sort of studying or test-taking
situation. Most exams in a college setting go beyond simple memorization, but you still
have a lot to remember for exams. For example, when Saanvi sits down to take an exam on
introductory biology, she needs to recall all the subject-specific vocabulary she read in the
textbook’s opening chapters, the general connections she made between biological studies
and other scientific fields, and any biology details introduced in the unit for which she is
taking the exam.
Trying to make these mental connections on too little sleep will take a large mental toll
because Saanvi has to concentrate even harder than she would with adequate sleep. She
isn’t merely tired; her brain is not refreshed and primed to conduct difficult tasks. Although
not an exact comparison, think about when you overtax a computer by opening too
many programs simultaneously. Sometimes the programs are sluggish or slow to
respond, making it difficult to work efficiently; sometimes the computer shuts down
completely and you have to reboot the entire system. Your body is a bit like that on too
little sleep.

Analysis Question
How long do you sleep every night on average? Do you see a change in your ability to
function when you haven’t had enough sleep? What could you do to limit the number of
nights with too little sleep?

2) Downside of Cramming
At least once in their college careers, most students will experience the well-known
pastime called cramming. See if any of this is familiar: Shelley has lots of classes, works
part-time at a popular restaurant. She isn’t worried because she has set aside time she
would have spent sleeping to cram just before the exam. That’s the idea anyway. Originally,
Example she planned to stay up a little late and study for four hours from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. and still
get several hours of refreshing sleep. But her study session doesn’t start until midnight—
she’ll pull an all-nighter. So, two hours after her original start time, she tries to cram all the
lessons, problems, and information from the last two weeks of lessons into this one session.
Shelley falls asleep around 3 a.m. with her notes and books still on her bed. After her late
night, she doesn’t sleep well and goes into the morning exam tired.
Shelley does OK but not great on the exam, and she is not pleased with her results. More
and more research is showing that the stress Shelley has put on her body doing this,
combined with the way our brains work, makes cramming a seriously poor choice for
learning.

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Negative effect of lack of sleep

One sleep researcher, Dr. Susan Redline from Boston, says, "Sleep deficiency can affect
mood and the ability to make memories and learn, but it also affects metabolism,
appetite, blood pressure, levels of inflammation in the body and perhaps even the
immune response."7 xv
Cramming causes stress, which can lead to paralyzing test anxiety; it erroneously
supposes you can remember and understand something fully after only minimal exposure;
and it overloads your brain, which, however amazing it is, can only focus on one concept
at a time and a limited number of concepts all together for learning and retention.
Leading neuroscientist John Medina claims that the brain begins to wander at about 10
minutes, at which point you need a new stimulus to spark interest.8 xvi That doesn’t mean
you can’t focus for longer than 10 minutes; you just have to switch gears a lot to keep your
brain engaged. Trying to cram all reading, problem-solving, and note reviewing into one
long session; your brain will wander.

What Students Say

• Which of the following is your most common method of studying?
k. Reading or rereading the text or my class notes.
l. Watching videos of my instructor's lecture or other people discussing the topics.
m. Taking practice quizzes/tests.
n. Creating/using study tools (flashcards, mnemonic devices, etc.)
o. Working with a study group, tutor, or academic support.
• Which of the following do you have the most difficulty remembering?
a. Vocabulary and facts (such as Biology vocab, Historical facts.)
b. Problem-solving methods (such as in Math)
c. Details from text and literature
d. Skills and processes (such as a lab technique or a building process)
e. Computer functions/locations/processes
f. Which formulas, processes, or categories to apply in situations (such as in Physics or
Accounting)
• How much anxiety do you feel when an exam or other major course evaluation is
approaching?
a. A great deal
b. A lot
c. A moderate amount
d. A little
e. None at all

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6.2 Studying
Preparing to Study
Studying is hard work, but you can still learn some techniques to help you be a more
effective learner. Two major and interrelated techniques involve
1)avoiding distractions to the best of your ability and 2)creating a study environment
that works to help you concentrate.
1) Avoiding Distractions
We have always had distractions—video games, television shows, movies, music, friends—
can distract us from doing something else we need to do, like study for an exam. Cell
phones, tablets, and portable computers that literally bring a world of possibilities to us
anywhere have brought distraction to an entirely new level. When was the last time you
were with a large group of people when you didn’t see at least a few people on devices?
An effective
strategy Perhaps the least stressful way to allow yourself a distraction-free environment is to EX:
make the study session a definite amount of time: long enough to get a significant
amount of studying accomplished but short enough to hold your attention.
pomodoro
You can increase that attention time with practice and focus. Pretend it is a
professional appointment or meeting during which you cannot check e-mail or texts or
otherwise engage with your portable devices. We have all become very attached to the
ability to check in—anonymously on social media or with family and friends via text, chat,
and calls. If you set a specific amount of time to study without interruptions, you can
convince your wandering mind that you will soon be able to return to your link to the
outside world. Start small and set an alarm—a 30-minute period to review notes, then a
brief break, then another 45-minute study session to quiz yourself on the material, and so
on.
When you prepare for your optimal study session, remember to do these things:
• Put your phone out of sight—in another room or at least some place where
you will not see or hear it vibrate or ring. Just flipping it over is not enough.
• Turn off the television or music (more on that in the next section).
• Unless you are deliberately working with a study group, study somewhere
alone if possible or at least away from others enough to not hear them talking.
If you live with lots of other people or don’t have access to much privacy, see if you can
negotiate some space alone to study. Ask others to leave one part of the house or an area in
one room as a quiet zone during certain hours. Ask politely for a specific block of time;
most people will respect your educational goals and be willing to accommodate you. If
you’re trying to work out quiet zones with small children in the house, the bathtub with a
pillow can make a fine study oasis.

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2) Study Environment
You may not always be in the mood or inspired to study. And if you have a long deadline,
maybe you can blow off a study session on occasion, but you shouldn’t get into the habit
of ignoring a strong study routine. Jane Austen once wrote in a letter, “I am not at all in a
humor for writing; I must write on till I am.” Sometimes just starting is the hard part; go
ahead and begin. Don’t wait around.
Sometimes you just need to plop down and study whenever and wherever you can
manage—in the car waiting for someone, on the bus, at the Little League field as you cheer
on your shortstop. And that’s OK if this is the exception. For long-term success in
studying, though, you need a better study setting that will help you get the most out of
your limited study time. Whatever your space limitations, carve out a place that you
can dedicate to reading, writing, note taking, and reviewing. This doesn’t need to be
elaborate and expensive—all you truly need is a flat surface large enough to hold either
your computer or writing paper, book or notes, pens/pencils/markers, and subject-specific
materials you may need (e.g., stand-alone calculators, drawing tools, and notepads). Your
space should be cool or warm enough for you to be comfortable as you study.

Figure 6.7 Which is before, and which is after? (Credit: Ali West / Flickr / Attribution 2.0
Generic (CC-BY 2.0))
If it is at all possible, try to make this area exclusive to your study sessions and something
you can leave set up all the time and a place out of the way of family or roommate traffic.
For example, Martina thought setting up her study station on the dining room table was a
good idea at first. The view was calming, and the table was big enough to spread out and
could even hold all her materials to study architectural drawings, her favorite subject. But
then she needed the table for a small family dinner party, so she had to find a cubbyhole to
hide away her supplies with some needing to go into a closet in the next room. Now she
was spread out over multiple study spaces. And the family TV was in an adjacent room, not
visible from the table but certainly an auditory distraction. Martina ultimately decided to
forgo her view and create a smaller station in an unused bedroom so she could leave her
supplies out and have a quieter area. You may have to try out numerous places to
determine what works best for you.

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You don’t need an elaborate setting, but you may want to consider including a few effective
additions if you have the space:
• small bulletin board for often-used formulas
• encouraging quotes or pictures of your goal
• whiteboard for brainstorming
• sticky notes for reminders in texts and notes
• file holder for most-used documents
• bookshelf for reference books

Activity
Make a comparison between your current studying space and your ideal studying space.

After you have described your ideal study environment, think how do you make your own
space in the library, a student lounge, or a dedicated space on campus for student studying?

Debunking Study Myths

MYTH #1: You can multitask while studying.
How many times do you eat in the car? Watch TV while you write out a grocery list? Listen
to music while you cook dinner? What about type an e-mail while you’re on the phone with
someone else and jot down notes about the call? The common term for this attempt to do
more than one thing at a time is multitasking, and almost everyone does it at some point.
The problem is, multitasking doesn’t really work. Of course, it exists, and we do it. For
instance, we walk and chew gum or drive and talk, but we are not really thinking about two
or more distinct things or doing multiple processes simultaneously.
MYTH #2: Highlighting main points of a text is useful.
Another myth of studying that seems to have a firm hold is that the idea of highlighting
text—in and of itself—is the best way to review study material. It is one way, and you can
get some benefit from it, but don’t trick yourself into spending too much time on this
surface activity and consider your study session complete. Annotating texts or notes is a Note
first-step type of study practice. If you allow it to take up all your time, you may want to taking
think you are fully prepared for an exam because you put in the time. You need much
more time reviewing as well as quizzing yourself to accomplish your goal of learning so you
can perform well on the exam. true learning needs more steps.
MYTH #3: Studying effectively is effortless.
There is nothing effortless about studying. Many students don’t put in the time necessary to
learn complex material: it takes time and effort. When done right, learning takes focus,
deliberate strategies, and time. Think about a superstar athlete who puts in countless
hours of drills and conditioning so that she makes her work on the field look easy. If you
can also enjoy the studying, the skill development, and the knowledge building, then
you will most likely be more motivated to do the work.

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Study Strategies
Practicing effective memorization is when you use a trick, technique, or strategy to
recall something—for another class, an exam, or even to bring up an acquaintance’s name
in a social situation. Really whatever works for you to recall information is a good tool to
have. You can create your own quizzes and tests to go over material from class. You can
use mnemonics to jog your memory. You can work in groups to develop unique ways to
remember complex information. Whatever methods you choose to enhance your memory,
keep in mind that repetition is one of the most effective tools in any memory strategy. Do
whatever you do over and over for the best results.

1) Using Mnemonics
Mnemonics (pronounced new-monics) are a way to remember things using reminders.
Did you learn the points of the compass by remembering NEWS (north, east, west, and PEMDAS
south)? These are mnemonics. These help you bring up the information quickly, especially
for multistep processes or lists.
2) Practicing Concept Association
When you study, you’re going to make connections to other things—that’s a good thing. It
shows a highly intelligent ability to make sense of the world when you can associate like
and even somewhat unlike components.
3) Generating Idea Clusters
Like mnemonics, idea clusters are nothing more than ways to help your brain come up with
ways to recall specific information by connecting it to other knowledge you already have.

4) Three Effective Study Strategies

There are more than three study strategies, but focusing on the most effective strategies
will make an enormous difference in how well you will be able to demonstrate learning
(also known as “acing your tests”). Here is a brief overview of each of the three strategies:
• Spacing—This has to do with when you study. Hint: Don’t cram; study over a
period of days, preferably with “breaks” in between.
• Interleaving—This has to do with what you study. Hint: Don’t study just one type
of content, topic, chapter, or unit at a time; instead, mix up the content when you
study.
• Practice testing—This has to do with how you study. Hint: Don’t just reread
content. You must quiz or test your ability to retrieve the information from your
brain.
ways of test taking
You can do a practice “test” in two ways. One is to test yourself as you are reading or taking first
in information. You can ask yourself what a paragraph or text section means as you read.
To do this, read a passage in a text, cover up the material, and ask yourself, “What was the
main idea of this section?” Recite aloud or write down your answer, and then check it
against the original information.

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Another, more involved, way to practice test is to create flashcards or an actual test by second
writing a test. This takes more time, but there are online programs such as Quizlet that
make it a little easier. Practice testing is an effective study strategy because it helps you
practice retrieving information, which is what you want to be able to do when you are
taking the real test.
One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else, so ask a friend or third
family member if you can explain something to them, and teach them the lesson. You may
find you know more about the subject than you thought . . . or you may realize quickly that
you need to do more studying. It is a form of practice testing that requires you to
demonstrate you know something in front of someone else! No one wants to look like they
don’t know what they are talking about, even if it your audience is another classmate.

Recognizing Strengths/Weaknesses of Preferred Study Approaches

Most of us employ multiple methods of study all the time. You usually only run into
trouble if you stubbornly rely on just one way to learn or study and the material you’re
studying or the task you want to accomplish doesn’t lend itself to that preference. You
can practice specific strategies to help you learn in your preferred learning approach. Can
you think of a time when the way you usually study a situation didn’t work? Consider the
way the material you are studying will be assessed -- to help choose a study approach.
You should also consider your instructor’s preferred method of teaching and learning.
Watching the way they teach lessons or convey necessary course information to the class.

Practicing Active Continuous Improvement for All Preferences

You can certainly learn through specific approaches or according to specific preferences,
but you will also need to adapt to different situations, skills, and subject areas. Don’t Learning
limit yourself to thinking you can only learn one way or another. That mindset induces styles
anxiety when you encounter a learning situation that doesn’t match your preference. In
fact, you should sometimes work on the styles/preferences that you feel are your least
favorite; it will actually strengthen your overall ability to learn and retain information.10 xvii

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6.3 Test Taking

Questions to consider:
• How can you take a whole person approach to test taking?
• What can you do on test day to increase your confidence and success?
• What should you know about test anxiety?
Probably the most obvious differences between your preparation for an exam and the
actual test itself is your level of urgency and the time constraints. A slight elevation in
your stress level can actually be OK for testing—it keeps you focused and on your game
when you need to bring up all the information, thinking, and studying to show what you’ve
learned. Properly executed, test preparation mixed in with a bit of stress can
significantly improve your actual test-taking experience.

Preparation vs. Actual Test

You can replicate the effective sense of urgency an actual test produces by including timed
writing into your study sessions. You don’t need all of your study time to exactly replicate
the test, but you would be well served to find out the format of the exam in advance and
practice the skills you’ll need to use for the various test components. On one early exam
in history, Stuart learned the prof was going to include several short-answer essay
questions—one for each year of the time period covered. Stuart set up practice times to
write for about 15 to 20 minutes on significant events from his notes because he estimated
that would be about how much time he could devote out of the hour-long testing session to
write one or two required short-answer questions. He would write a prompt from his
notes, set a timer, and start writing. If you’re ready and you have practiced and know the
material, 20 minutes is adequate to prepare, draft, and revise a short response, but you
don’t have a lot of extra time.
Making yourself adhere to a timed session during your study can only help. It puts a
sense of urgency on you, and it will help you to find out what types of problems you need to
practice more than ones that perhaps you’re more comfortable solving.

Leveraging Study Habits for Test Prep

In your mind, you probably know what you need to do to be prepared for tests.
Occasionally, something may surprise you—emphasis on a concept you considered
unimportant or a different presentation of a familiar problem. But those should be
exceptions.. Here’s a checklist for study and test success for your consideration:

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Read this list with each separate class in mind, and check off the items you already do. Give
yourself one point for every item you checked. Doing the steps mindfully will give you a
nice head start. If you do fewer than five of the steps—you have some work to do. But
recognition is a good place to start, and you can incorporate these steps starting now.

Whole Person Approach to Testing

Just because you are facing a major exam in your engineering class (or math or science or
English class) doesn’t mean everything else in your life comes to a stop. Allergies still flare
up, cleaning chores will not go away, and you still need to sleep. You must see your
academic life as one segment of who you are.

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Neela tries to turn off everything else when she has exams coming up in her nursing
program, which is pretty often. She ignores her health, puts off her family, tries to
reschedule competing work tasks, and focuses all her energy on the pending exam. On the
surface, that sounds like a reasonable approach, but if she becomes really sick by ignoring a
minor head cold, or if she misses an important school deadline for one of her children,
Neela risks making matters worse by attempting to compartmentalize so strictly. Taking
care of her own health by eating and sleeping properly; asking for help in other aspects of
her busy life, such as attending to the needs of her children; and seeing the big picture of
how it all fits together would be a better approach. Pretending otherwise may work
sporadically, but it is not sustainable for the long run.
A whole person approach to testing takes a lot of organization, scheduling, and
attention to detail, but the life-long benefits make the effort worthwhile.

Establishing Realistic Expectations for Test Situations

Would you expect to make a perfect pastry if you’ve never learned how to bake? Or paint a
masterpiece if you’ve never tried to work with paints and brushes? Probably not. But often
we expect ourselves to perform at much higher levels of achievement than that for which
we’ve actually prepared. Realistically knowing that your current best may not achieve the
highest academic ratings can help you plot your progress.
Realistic continuous improvement is a better plan, because people who repeatedly
attempt challenges for which they have not adequately prepared and understandably
fail (or at least do not achieve the desired highest ranking) often start moving toward
the goal in frustration. They simply quit. This doesn’t mean you settle for mediocre
grades or refrain from your challenges. It means you become increasingly aware of yourself
and your current state and potential future. Know yourself, know your strengths and
weaknesses, and be honest with yourself about your expectations.

Prioritizing Time Surrounding Test Situations

If your instructor conducts some sort of pre-exam summary or prep session, make sure to
attend. These can be invaluable. If this instructor does not provide that sort of formal exam
prep, create your own with a group of
classmates or on your own.

Test Anxiety
Test anxiety is very real. It can cause us to
doubt ourselves so severely that we
underperform on the exam. If you suffer from
test anxiety, the first step is to understand
what it is and what it is not, and then to
practice some simple strategies to cope with
your anxious feelings relative to test taking.

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Chapter 6: Memory, Studying and Test-taking

Understanding Test Anxiety

If someone tries to tell you that test anxiety is all in your head, they’re sort of right. Our
thinking is a key element of anxiety of any sort. On the other hand, test anxiety can
manifest itself in other parts of our bodies as well. You may feel queasy or light-headed if
you are experiencing test anxiety. Your palms may sweat, or you may become suddenly Symptoms
very hot or very cold for no apparent reason. At its worst, test anxiety can cause its of anxiety
sufferers to experience several unpleasant conditions including nausea, diarrhea, and
shortness of breath. Some people may feel as though they may throw up, faint, or have a
heart attack, none of which would make going into a testing situation a pleasant idea.
We can become very nervous when we think about taking an exam because if we do really
poorly, we think, we may have to face consequences as dire as dropping out of school or
never graduating. Usually, this isn’t going to happen, but we can literally make ourselves
sick with anxiety if we dwell on those slight possibilities. Don’t let the most extreme and
severe result take over your thoughts. Prepare well and do your best, see where you
land, and then go from there.

Using Strategies to Manage Test Anxiety

You have to work hard to control test anxiety so it does not take an unhealthy hold on
you every time you face a test situation, which for many of you will last well into your
careers. One of the best ways to control test anxiety is to be prepared for the exam. You
can control that part. You can also learn effective relaxation techniques including
controlled breathing, visualization, and meditation. Some of these practices work well even
in the moment: at your test site, take a deep breath, close your eyes, and smile—just
bringing positive thoughts into your mind can help you meet the challenges of taking
an exam without anxiety taking over.
Many professions require participants to take frequent licensing exams to prove they
are staying current in their rapidly changing work environments, including nursing,
engineering, education, and architecture, as well as many other occupations. You have tools
to take control of your thinking about tests. Better to face it head-on and let test anxiety
know who’s in charge!

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