Beat anxiety before it beats you

Whether it’s a night out, a new module, starting the next academic year, or planning to make a romantic move on someone, we all get anxious about things from time to time.

photo by Pulpolux

As soon as you begin to worry about possible problems surrounding your actions, anxiety is taking over. When you begin to question things, ask these questions instead:

1. Is it worth worrying about?

Minds like to take a minor problem and explode it into chaos. It doesn’t matter how calm a person is, they are still susceptible.

When you lose control of your own thoughts and the anxiety sets in, think about how important the issue really is. You may be anxious, but are you taking it out of proportion?

2. Have I considered what other people go through?

Another great trick of the mind is how we convince ourselves that our experiences are unique. But most people share similar anxieties. You’re not alone in feeling uncomfortable about doing something for the first time, or coping with a new task. When you realise that, it’s not half as bad to think about.

How do other people manage? Probably in just the same way you will; with a mixture of difficulty, daring and open-mindedness.

3. Am I being too stubborn to accept help?

Many people tell me they like to go it alone for one reason or another. To them, assistance is a sign of failure, or a show of weakness. To me, it’s a valid source of getting to a winning position. I rarely turn down help. I’d need a good reason to not accept it.

What are your real reasons for not wanting the help?

4. Have I considered asking for help at all?

The pressure of something new can result in clamming up. Instead of considering the possibilities, the fear closes the outside world down. Before long, you’re way out of your depth and haven’t even stopped to think that it might just take another pair of hands to get you out of an anxious fix.

5. Am I listening to others too much?

On the flipside of not asking for advice, you’ve got listening to too much of it. Worse still, you may listen to students who want to make a point with a little less than the truth.

Maybe everyone around you says their work is so easy. If you’re finding it difficult, don’t believe what they’re saying. A lot of words are just for effect. It’s the same if they say they did no work and still got good grades. It’s all a show.

Don’t let other people’s words turn into your anxieties…

6. Am I wading through a disorganised mess?

Without proper plans, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with life in general. Get a diary, get a wall planner, start writing lists, work out how long you need on tasks, set your priorities out, do all you can to become organised.

Without clear goals and priorities, you’re basically treating everything with the same importance. Since you’re unlikely to be sitting in your room in silence 24 hours a day, doing nothing whatsoever, a lack of priorities is a step toward disaster. So get planning and watch the anxiety melt away.

7. Do I tend to do only the things I want to do?

Ignore something and it won’t go away. Bury your head in the sand and what do you get? Nothing more than a sandy head.

The longer you put a difficult or uncomfortable task off, the worse you’ll feel about it as time goes on. As a double blow, your list of difficult tasks will only increase in number, leaving you unhappy and under even more pressure.

Eventually you’ll have to complete these tasks anyway, so why let the anxiety build when you can get it out of the way quickly? You may still be anxious about it, but nothing like the amount you’d feel if you left it until the last minute.

8. Can I put myself in someone else’s shoes?

Be someone else! Depending on the situation, you may want to take on some of the personality traits from various people you know:

– a friend who is always confident…pluck up the courage to do what you want;
– a lecturer…give yourself a critical mind, think deeply about your study, and imagine already having in-depth knowledge and a confidence about your subject;
– an artist…get your creative juices flowing if you’re not already doing an arts based subject.
– a scientist…look clinically at the books, poems, films, that you’re studying. See how they stand up to questioning;
– a person who has already succeeded where your anxieties lie…see the after-effects of success. Feel the exhilaration of the event itself. Rejoice at the outcome and see it as all in a day’s work. Now you’ve lived more than the worry, banish that anxiety and lead yourself to where you want to be.

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You’ve probably heard the saying ‘Carpe Diem‘, or ‘seize the day’. Look to seize all those opportunities available to you when they present themselves. Anxiety tells you to hold back. Hold back for too long and it could be too late to seize the day.

At the start of each day, it’s great to welcome it with a smile and a knowing nod of the head. “I can do it!”

photo by emsef

Exam Success: Top Tips from Brilliant Blogs

Exam Hall - photo by jackhynes

I heard from an A-Level student a few weeks ago and they wanted some help for revision and taking exams.

I want to do well but I don’t know how to do well in exams.  Coursework’s fine, but I always fail exams.  What am I doing wrong?

I compiled a list of links, with my favourite tips from each article.  My wife and I added some of our own words of advice for the student.  That help comes after the main list.

This advice is just as good for uni students, so here it is for you too.  Each post is worth reading in full if you have the time:

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Students as customers: 6-point checklist for the feedback you deserve

In January, Times Higher Education reported that Liverpool Hope University has banned the notion of students as ‘customers’.

I fear that’s missing the point.  Students don’t swan about campus the whole time as if it’s a supermarket or a restaurant.  But they do recognise the right to get a good level of education and they do realise the need to complain if they aren’t getting what they have a right to.  A student wants to be satisfied that although they leave university with debts from fees and loans, they will have also left university with a quality experience that was worth every penny.

Do You Want Fries With That - photo by wickenden

Students ARE customers, whether an institution likes it or not.

Gerald Pillay, Vice-Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University, expressed a moral duty to care for students.  When using a term like ‘customer service’, Pillay felt it suggested a financial reason for care, rather than a desire for the individual to excel.

Strangely, looking at Liverpool Hope’s ‘Student Charter‘, it still states:

“Students should expect high standards of professionalism and customer service from all staff and should complain if those standards are not met.” [my italics]

Whatever the case, the charter is spot on.  It reinforces the notion of the student as customer among other things.  Universities need to see both a consumer and academic side to a student’s education.  While there is certainly an academic community of discovery, it is bound with an economic element.  Students are fully aware that they are paying toward a service.

As the National Student Survey has shown, a major concern you have as students today is that you don’t always receive sufficient feedback from tutors about your course or the work involved.  Of course it’s a concern.  You don’t expect to buy a flatpack cupboard and find no instructions.  You’d be appalled if you paid for a service that didn’t provide the quality that you’d paid for.

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The little things you might not always think about for lectures

If turning up for a lecture wasn’t difficult enough, you have to learn stuff from it too. Unbelievable!

Even then it’s not as simple as sitting down with a pen and paper (or laptop) and letting the magic commence.

Not to worry. Here are 11 small tips to get the most out of the lecture process:

photo by kitsu

  1. Prepare for the lecture by reading up on the subject. Approaching the lecture with a basic overview can improve your comprehension and boost the clarity greatly (even if you’ve simply checked a Wikipedia article and done a quick Google search).
  2. Take a bottle of water with you. Your mind will wander if you get thirsty half way through the lecture.
  3. For each set of notes, write down the module title, the date, and that lecture’s topic.
  4. Number your pages of notes if you write a lot.
  5. Leave plenty of white space in the margins, so you can make further annotations, if necessary.
  6. If you have further questions that haven’t been answered, NOTE THESE DOWN for asking/researching later.
  7. Mark/Highlight any sections, ideas, or concepts that the lecturer says is important and likely to form part of an essay or exam.
  8. Listen. Yes, I know you’re supposed to listen, but engage with your own mind as the lecture moves along. Ask yourself questions, try and evaluate points through what you already know, get involved in the meat of the topic even though you’re just listening to another person speak.
  9. Even if you’re told a printout will be given of presentation slides from the lecture, still make notes. It’s not an excuse to stop writing.
  10. If the lecturer does present on Powerpoint and (for some strange reason) doesn’t distribute the slides, ask them for a copy. No harm in asking…the worst they can say is ‘No’.
  11. Organise your notes as soon as you can after the lecture. The longer you leave them alone, the less they’ll end up making sense and helping you when you revise from them.