Qualifying exam anxiety- advice needed

[ginagirl]

My comprehensive exam is in a week and I need to vent/look for some advice. I’m paralyzed with fear and anxiety about this and my studying has screeched to a halt. I started really studying for the exam when finals ended last week, and I had been aiming to study 8 hrs a day until test day. It started out ok, but at this point, a week later, I can hardly study for an hour at a time without feeling like I’m going to have a meltdown. I feel ok about 50% of the material but as far as trying to absorb new information, I’m completely shutting down. The panic is consuming me. How can I stay calm enough to continue to study for the next week and how can I avoid not having a breakdown on exam day? Can anyone relate to me at all? I’m terrified that I will sit down to take the test and won’t remember anything. Please help  

(As a side note, this exam is en route to my masters degree and is just a 4 hour exam of everything we've learned over the past year. I am in a quantitative field so it is all problem/calculation-based, not essays.)

[knp]

I sympathize! I have been there often, but have managed to remediate it through judicious use of breaks. Because your anxiety level is already so high, I would schedule a guilt-free day or day and a half to just chill. At least for me, when I'm in the throes of it, taking time off -- and real time off, not "dark forest," guilty/preoccupied time off -- helps me push the "reset button" on my mental state. Sometimes it takes as little as 3-4 hours, and usually just 6-8, but scheduling a full day ensures that the reset "takes". I know it feels hard not to be studying, but studying 2 hours a day and feeling like you'll have a breakdown after each hours produces less study time over the next week than taking tomorrow off and studying 6 hours a day after that. So take a little time and read a familiar book, eat something nice and comforting (but not too heavy - and no drinking), get outside and/or get moving, maybe watch some soothing TV, talk to a friend about non-work stuff, meditate, whatever works for you. If I have done this, I can then get back to it without such an imminent risk of a meltdown. (When I have a lot of studying to do, I will say that breaking it down can help. Unless I get in the zone, which I can't count on, it's very hard to study for more than two hours at a time. So if I wanted to study for 8 hours a day, I would study for four two-hour chunks with at least 45 minutes in between each of them.) You can do this, good luck!

[ginagirl]

knp- thanks for the advice. I've definitely been struggling with the guilt of trying to take some time off, but I will start scheduling some down time. Also thanks for the link to that blog post- I'd read it a while back but I definitely needed to read it again now.

[MoJingly]

So, my exam was a little different.  I didn't have to take a test but I did have to propose and defend my project.  The concept of a qualifying exam is terrifying, isn't it?  "Prove to us you have knowledge!"

 

That said, you know more than you think you do, especially because you just came out of coursework.  Take a deep breath and, yes, take time off.  

 

The most helpful thing for me while I was preparing was to ask myself, "what would I feel stupid if I didn't know?"  What are all of those BASIC and easy things that would be embarrassing to forget?  That's a good place to focus for a while, and will build some confidence. 

[TMP]

Agreed.  Believe it or not, my first exam questions during the oral were... basic stuff.  It's likely that the committee will gradually increase the difficulty of the questions-- mainly to see where the limits of your knowledge are.  Kind of think about answering the questions like a game of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?  Except your lifelines are "I don't know" and "I'll have to look that up."

 

Review the basic stuff to give you a foundational sense of confidence.