Exam stress management strategies during Covid 19

On 11th March 2020, the WHO carried out virtual  press conference and confirmed  our fears. Covid 19 was declared  a pandemic with such a wide reach and explosive magnitude, the world braced itself  for the impact. Lockdowns  were imposed, economies  brought to a grinding  halt and travel was shutdown. All of us were struck  where we had to embrace what covid 19 had in store for us. Due to pandemic  schools  were closed and we were made sit at home after few days school initiated the online mode for teaching . Online classes  were definitely  daunting at first because  they  were the “Unknown” for so many of us. The sudden change  made a deep impact to my mind and gradually got  transformed  into  stress. Everything  got shattered,  from where to start and where to end was getting  disappeared in fog. And this stress started  spreading  in my body like a virus, when I wasn’t  able to manage my  time during  online exam. It’s  a scientific  fact that the hormones  of stress down regulate genes and create disease, long-term effects. That means our thoughts  could  make sick.
So if our thoughts can make us sick, then thoughts  can make us well.
Stress  happens  when our body and brain  are knocked out of balance. The stress response is what the body innately does to return itself back to order. When we turn on our stress response and you can’t  turn it off, now we are headed  for disease  because no organism  in nature can live in emergency mode for that  extended period of time. Stress is a habit( a redundant  set of automatic , unconscious thoughts,  behaviors and emotions that’s acquired through  repetition). So if you think about it, when we wake up in the morning ,we start thinking about our problems, those problems are circuits of memories in the brain each one of those memories are connected to people and things at certain  times and places and if the brain is a record of the past the moment  we start  our day we are already thinking in the past. Each one of those memories has an emotion. Emotions are the end product of past experiences. So the moment we recall those memories of our problems we all of a sudden feel unhappy,  sad or pain.
So the familiar past will sooner or later be predictable  future. The stress, The mastermind behind every cause and effect made some days of life into nightmare. My parents started getting worried about my health. They made an every single effort to make me comfort with online mode of exam and scenario outside. A few months later I started getting adjusted. My parents explained me that there are 3 magical words hope, bond and motivation that can change any situation. Hope :-As in the poem the tiger is caged in a zoo with confined space. He is angry and can not do anything but he had a one way that was keeping a spark of hope. He did by looking at stars in a hope that some day he will be free from confined space and will be able to move freely in his home forest. Visualize this situation in which tiger as you and cage as corona and don’t leave hope because someday we will be all free from this virus. Bond :-The best example of bond is- the bond between colours as red and yellow colour combine with each other and they create orange colour. Where red symbolises courage and confidence,yellow colour symbolises wisdom and awareness and orange colour symbolise joy. The bond between 2 colours red and yellow created new colour similarly Our bond should be like these colours which create something not destroy. Motivation :-The best example of motivation is you as no one can motivate you until your soul is ready to accept. If there is a spark of hope within you then their is motivation.
Recovery could be possible if there is hope, bond and motivation. Problems come and go but leave their footprints.
there are 2 phases of life happiness and sadness. Some day the life will show you happy phase and other day the sad phase but how we fight with the problem and overcome to win from this is called living a life. These beautiful lines explained  by my mom change my vision of thinking and started managing by day. I started managing things according to online classes and  exam.  I started eliminating everything that would make me unhappy and replacing  those things with more of things that make me feel alive. Joyful, abundant, happy and free. There are 5 simple tips behind exam stress  management:-
The first is to spend time with people who are good for your mental health. Second is to choose to see the good , the lesson or the blessing in everything.  Third  is to live your way. Fourth is to take care of your physical,  mental  and spiritual  health.  And finally the fifth is to believe, trust  and let go. And due to my parents support  and 5 stress management strategies online exam were no more enemy to me. ” Stress less Study more”.
At last but not the least make your strength effective and weaknesses irrelevant. A lack of adequate preparation will only result in an unnecessary amount of stress during the exam. Find comfort in knowing that you have power over the exam, perhaps more so than you ever have. Now I personally, praise the online assessment system. I find it less stressful, less complicated and feel that it assesses capabilities beyond memorization. I would not go as far as to say that I enjoyed taking these exams  but they were about as good as an exam could get.
Always we should stay calm,  prepare  and do your best. That is all anyone can ask you, online or in person.

By:- Bhavya