Testing Times

 I once heard an older relative remark that she couldn’t understand why stress was such an issue nowadays. In her day people didn’t get stressed. They just got on with things. Perhaps she had never had to sit an important exam, or perhaps she had just forgotten what it felt like to be tested.

The trouble with being tested is that exams and tests (now being set for children as young as five) do not so much test what you know, or even what you think. They test what you are. At least that is what it feels like as you wait in a queue outside the exam hall with writing implements in hand and perhaps a tissue or two. Having been a mature student, I remember the feeling only too well. Before embarking on a degree fairly late in life, I had thought that by the time I had to take exams again, long after the days of ‘O’ Levels, I would be much more in control of all the emotions which come with being tested. But one never is.

One of the biggest challenges which comes with exams is having to appear outwardly fairly indifferent to them, not to show what you are feeling to those around you, either because you don’t want them to feel more nervous than they already are, or because you’d rather not let on that you’re pretty churned up about the whole business yourself. In any case, times of trial and testing are not times for loading others with one’s own emotions. Emotions can come out before or after, but preferably not during. This being the case, they need to be managed, but not denied, before they even start to be felt, from the moment that it becomes clear that the dreaded ‘e’ season is about to kick in.

This brings us back to the question of how we perceive stress. Is it something over which we have no control? or is it something which is built in to our emotional DNA, which is just part of who we are and over which we also think we have no control? And is control really what is required? I think a better word would be ‘manage’ or ‘navigate’. In other words, accept that stress and its accompanying emotions exist and try to work with them rather than against them.  The key to dealing with exam stress is to develop methods and rhythms of work and relaxation which make it possible to step outside the stress and its attendant emotions, rather than simply drown them in distractions or hide from them. Stepping outside our emotions, including fear and anxiety, allows us to contemplate these feelings from a safe and secure place ‘outside’ ourselves, rather than trying to suppress or control them using our own limited inner emotional strength.  Yes, we are worried and frightened, but we might also be a little excited, so this is a creative and re-energising exercise.

 Remaining in the ‘outside’ place with regard to exam stress also allows for the right amount of adrenalin to energise us in the right way. A certain amount of adrenalin is necessary and good in testing circumstances because it helps us convert  negative and uncreative emotions into ones which are both positive and useful. Adrenalin, used properly, allows us to convert negative emotions into ones which allow us to give the best of what we have to give when the time of testing comes. When this happens, the test of who we are, which is part of the stress of exam taking, becomes an exciting challenge.

All of this is only feasible when we remember that exams are not a test of whether we are a success or failure in life. Neither do they decide whether we are worthy of our parents’ love, or of anyone else’s. They are simply a chance to give of our best to God who loves us unconditionally and knows who we are better than we do. In other words, he has no prejudged expectations of us as persons, based on how well or badly we perform in exams or in any other aspect of life. He neither writes us off as failures before we have even started, nor does he have expectations deriving from unfulfilled dreams of his own. He will never, even in the worst possible exam scenario, be disappointed in us. He simply loves us. This is why we call him ‘Father’.