Exam stress: what actually helps before boards

Board exams in India carry a weight that is difficult to overstate. For a lot of families they are treated as the thing the next decade depends on, and a fifteen or seventeen year old absorbs that whether or not anyone says it out loud.

This is written for both people: the student, and the parent watching and not knowing what to do with their hands.

Some stress is doing its job

Worth saying first, because the goal is not zero. A degree of pressure before something that matters is normal, and it is part of what gets the work done.

The question is not whether a student is stressed. It is whether the stress is still working for them or has started working against them.

For students

A few things that help more than they sound like they will.

• Protect sleep before you protect study hours. Studying tired is close to not studying. The night before matters far less than the fortnight before
• Work in blocks with real breaks. Forty minutes on, ten minutes off, and the ten minutes away from a screen
• Study by doing rather than by reading. Past papers and writing answers from memory beats rereading notes, which mostly produces a feeling of familiarity
• Pick tomorrow's three things tonight. Deciding what to study is exhausting and doing it at the desk wastes the best hour
• Eat, and move a little. Both sound irrelevant and both change how the day goes
• Do not compare study hours with friends. Someone always claims fourteen and it is not true

And one that is harder. If your mind goes blank in the exam, put the pen down, breathe out slowly a few times, and start with any question you can answer. Blankness is a physical response and it passes, usually faster than it feels like it will.

For parents

This is the part where good intentions most often make things worse, so it is worth being specific.

Your child almost certainly already knows the exams matter. Repetition does not add information, it adds weight. The most useful thing most parents can do in these weeks is take pressure off rather than add structure.

• Ask how they are rather than how much they have done. The second question is the one they are bracing for
• Protect their sleep even when they want to sit up. You are allowed to be the one who says stop
• Feed them and leave them alone. It is not nothing
• Avoid comparisons entirely, including favourable ones about siblings and cousins
• Say clearly, once, that your regard for them does not depend on the result. Then let it stand without repeating it
• Deal with your own anxiety somewhere other than in front of them

That last one is the hardest and it matters most. Children read the room, and a parent quietly terrified is louder than a parent saying it will be fine.

The week of, and the day itself

The last stretch has its own rules, and most of them are about doing less rather than more.

• Stop new material a couple of days out. Consolidating what is already there beats half learning something new
• Keep sleep in the same place all week. Shifting your body clock two days before an exam costs more than the extra hours gain
• Pack everything the night before so the morning has no decisions in it
• Eat something, even if you do not feel like it. Blank is worse on an empty stomach
• Leave the post mortem alone. Comparing answers afterwards helps nobody and there is usually another paper coming

For parents, the morning of an exam is not the time for encouragement that lands as pressure. Ordinary is better than significant. A normal breakfast and a normal goodbye does more than a speech.

The thing worth saying out loud

In a lot of Indian households the exam has quietly become a measure of the person rather than of the preparation, and that is the weight doing the real damage.

Boards matter. They also matter less than they feel like they do at seventeen. Routes reopen, courses change, people transfer, and almost nobody ends up where their sixteen year old self assumed the marks would put them. A student who believes their worth is being scored will study worse, not better, because fear narrows attention.

If you are a parent who genuinely does not feel this way, it is worth making sure they know it, because the surrounding noise says otherwise all day.

Signs worth paying attention to

For a parent, these are the ones that mean this has gone past ordinary exam pressure.

• Sleep broken for more than a few days, or sleeping constantly
• Studying has become impossible rather than hard. Sitting at the desk for hours with nothing happening
• Withdrawing completely from friends, family and food
• Physical symptoms: headaches, stomach trouble, panic before sitting down to work
• Talking about themselves as a failure, or about the future as though it is already decided
• Any mention of not wanting to be here

That last one is not something to wait out or interpret. Take it seriously the first time it is said, however lightly it is said.

When it is worth getting support

A few sessions during this period can take pressure off in a way that adding another tutor cannot. Often it helps simply to have one adult in a student's life who is not invested in the result.

Sessions are online, which matters when the calendar is already full, and they can be arranged around study rather than on top of it. That is what student mental wellbeing support is for. It can also be useful for the parent to talk it through separately, and there are signs it may be time to talk that apply just as much to adults.

When it needs more than counselling

If a student is talking about not wanting to be here, or you believe they may be at risk of harming themselves, please treat it as urgent. Counselling is not emergency care. Contact emergency services on 112, or Tele MANAS on 14416, which runs at any hour and is free, and do not leave them alone with it.

If any of this sounds familiar

A message is enough to start, whether it is the student or the parent who sends it. You do not need to have decided what the problem is first.