Does stress really affect your grades? Find out the not-so-glorious truth

Look, I ain’t gonna bust your balls here. Though, I have got to warn you that the truth is not as pretty as you may like to hope it is.

Research indeed suggests that exam stress means you are likely to have lower grades than what you deserve.

*Insert gasps of shock and horror*

I know, I know. You’ve worked so hard to make sure you can go as well as you possibly can and your grades are being robbed by stress! That just ain’t cool.

You might be wondering though, how does stress actually affect your grades? And, more importantly, what can you do about it?

As I mention in the Study Hacker book (which you can download here), your grades are most affected by stress during an exam situation.

During an exam is also the time when you are under the most amount of pressure to perform at your highest ability. To perform well, you must have absolute mental clarity. However, when under pressure, our natural, physiological reaction is to stress.

The physical response of stress shuts down your mental faculty because, well, in a fight or flight situation, who sits there thinking? Fight or flight instincts require physical action. You know, like running the fastest you ever have in your entire life. Or fighting the predator that’s about to eat you whole in order to ensure your survival.

There’s no time for thinking. This is totally bad news if you’re in an exam though. Your only chance of surviving that threat is to be thinking really clearly. You’ll also need to have complete access to the information you’ve stored in your long term memory during your study sessions.

Stress shuts this access down. The analogy I used in the Study Hacker book is useful here. Stress is like a gate in between the working part of your memory (also referred to as short-term memory) and your long-term memory. If you’ve ever been stressed in an exam and have had trouble remembering that thing you studied just the other night, well, that’s a perfect example of how stress got in the way of you being able to go well in your exam.

So, by now it’s at least a little obvious that we have an awkward situation arising here about exam stress. I hope that you can see why stress has got to go! There’s no room for it in your life if you want to improve your grades.

The next article will focus on what you can do to banish your test anxiety for good.

Stay tuned for more Study Hacker goodness!