Recently I received a message from a GCSE student, who is in hospital. I do not want to say anymore, until after you have read our conversation.
Hopefully, you have followed the conversation and can understand what this person is going through. This person has been seriously ill to the extent to which she has been hospitalised. Yet she still continues to revise as she is determined to achieve high grades. This hard work through pain is what it takes to achieve high grades. Ask yourself are you working hard. This person is working hard whilst in severe pain. Imagine how hard she will work when she's fine. She is your competition and she's working to take those very few grade 9s on offer.. You have no room for complacency or excuse for not revising.
4 months of a 16 year old's life is merely 1/48th of your life till now. It will be only 1/240th of your whole life*.
Work hard for this short period and it will prove invaluable for the rest of your life.
She has started revising early and is able to identify, which techniques are not working for her from an early stage, which allows her to change her methods with plenty of time to test their effectiveness. Also this will allow for her confidence to build slowly so that when exams come she will not be stressed the night before and will be able to get that complete sleep, which is key to one's success.
The last thing I want to talk about is this phrase "make my parents proud". All of us want to make our parents proud but by doing this we are only putting pressure and stress on ourselves. This may prove to be detrimental to those, who can not handle pressure/stress.
What will happen is that you will come to a part of the exam that is hard and you will start panicking. One's train of thought may be something like this "What will my mum/dad think about me failing? What will my friends think? I'm supposed to be smart. I'm letting everyone down."
That's why you should take three deep breaths (slowly inhaling and exhaling) with your eyes closed before an exam to clear your mind and any thoughts. This will help to calm and focus you. Do this exact procedure, when you start to panic at any point in the exam.
Stay calm and focused. You will succeed.
Naman Sharma
Dream, Believe, Achieve
*Life expectancy in the UK is 80 according to the world bank.
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