It's go time to work. you're prepared. You're sitting in your seat. Here are some final thoughts on what you need to consider as you open the exam book and actually dive in and start marking your answers and going through the process. Remember that practice equals performance. If you haven't practiced taking tests if you haven't put in some serious preparation and thought about how the exam is structured, and what the teacher is actually looking for.

Your performance is going to suffer. Put it in the time, do the hard work, and reap the rewards. Be confident. You're smart, you've gotten this far already. Really adopt the power pose. Instead of sitting with shoulders slumped in a worried look on your face.

Adopt a superman pose, stand upright, sit upright, hands on hips, take a deep breath. This has really been scientifically proven to enhance confidence and performance just google Amy Cuddy's TEDx talk and you'll see what I'm talking about. recognize it you're going to go through emotions and that's coming pletely normal, just acknowledge them and name them. This is sort of a mindfulness technique. But once you understand that what you're feeling is probably anxiety. Or maybe it's a little worried or a little bit of panic, whatever it is just name it, accept it, don't try to fight it or squash it down.

Don't waste the mental energy on that accept it as it comes, name it and let it go. Sit carefully. This is not always controllable, but whenever possible, choose your seat carefully. I like to sit by a window or an outside row because if I'm stuck or just need a little mental break and want to look away or look out the window, it doesn't appear that I will be looking at someone else's exam. So the same thing applies if you're sitting in the middle of a tight little lecture ball, and you're looking around the teacher who's there monitoring or proctoring The exam is probably going to have some concerns about what you're actually doing. So sit by a window and sit out a row, or very least in the back or the back corner.

I don't like someone behind me with their foot on my chair pushing or tapping. I try to avoid anybody who's chewing gum or if they're fidgeting and tapping tapping their pencil or pen outside the exam room, the same behavior is probably gonna happen during the exam. And that's certainly disruptive. And not something I want to be a part of. Maybe you need to bring earplugs, that's certainly allowable, just be sure to check with your instructor who's ever proctoring the exam, avoid those that are really freaked out. I mean, you're in tune enough to human behavior to be able to look at somebody and tell that they're freaking out, they're panicked.

You don't want to be by those people. You don't want to feed off any of that negative energy, and you certainly don't want them, you know, sitting behind you, peppering you with questions and asking, you know, what about this? What about that? So just avoid those people at all costs? Make sure to read what's actually written this talks about another section, but just read the entire question. And beware of tripwires, you know, yes, except all buttoned down except all those little phrases that you know really should be banned from test taking because they don't really they're not testing knowledge.

They're just testing your ability to to decipher the mundane in sort of a distance. As I think to students taking exams, you're going to get stuck in Natalie, there's going to be questions or material that you hadn't covered as well as you'd like. And that is expected. And there's a few ways to work around that. One is to try to rephrase the question. Think about how the teacher thought of the question or how they talk to you during lecture and try to rephrase it in a different way that might give you some light on what's actually being asked.

And if you actually have no idea, defer until later, don't sit and just ruminate about a question because you feel bad that you should be able to answer it and you can't mark it and move on. There's plenty of other questions that deserve your attention and don't waste time. I like to visualize I'm a visual learner. And when I get stuck, I'll try to visualize where the information is in my notes, is it on the right or left side of the page? is a bi a diagram or is it in the textbook, I often can kind of visualize where it was and actually start to see and read the words on the page. And that really helps solve the difficult questions.

Remember that foils that really challenging difficult tricky questions are actually have clues. So just be sure to read the question, rephrase it, look at all the answers. In the data, you'll be able to eliminate a number of choices and apply some common sense in to come up with an answer and get those extra points that make all the difference in the overall grade. You're trying to get finished strong, there's really no penalty for guessing. So because you don't know a question, there's no real benefit of leaving it blank. Eliminate anything that's incorrect, quickly, line it out, cross out Whatever method you do, and be sure to read each option.

A lot of times the first tendency is to jump on the one that seems most correct. But reading through the answers, oftentimes, you'll find some clues or some other answers that are much more valid. And just take advantage of that. And avoid second guessing. I see students who go through an exam rapidly they're sort of confident, but they've got 1015 minutes time left, so they go back and they start second guessing and you see the pencil going in the eraser, racer marks flying, and I just really want to discourage that type of behavior. Unless you have compelling evidence, or a piece of information, you recall that gives you a concrete reason to change the answer.

Don't second, guess yourself eocs actually oftentimes shoot yourself in the foot. Remember, the test taking is a learning experience, conduct a post game analysis, look at how you did in gauge why you did as well or as poorly as he did on certain sections. You can learn from your mistakes, and it really helps to fill in your knowledge gaps, particularly if you've got more of the course coming or a second phase of the course next semester. If there's something you really didn't get, or you thought you got right, and it was marked wrong, ask for clarification. I can't tell you the number of times that I've had questions that I undoubtedly knew I had answered correctly marked wrong, and going to talk to the TA or the the professor who graded the exam, and lo and behold, they had made a mistake. People are only human.

So double check your wrong answers. And you'll be surprised that over the course of a semester, you're probably going to gain a few points. If it's a problem with a formulas under derivations and work and you've shown Your work? Certainly if you don't have any idea why it got marked wrong, just go and there may be some issue there that they're willing to give you partial credit for. I'm not suggesting that you challenge teachers in terms of their grading methodology, although that's certainly been done. It's just not something that I find highly.

What's the word for? I don't think it shows good character. If a student goes and fights about an exam for no other reason than just trying to weasel into a good grade, if you have clear reason that you think your grades should be higher than I think that's valid, but just going and badgering a teacher, I had several classmates in med school that would retweet routinely do that and they certainly gathered themselves a reputation they didn't desire. By the time we'd finished all four years. Good luck. I'm confident you're prepared.

Now go Ace that exam.