Dealing With Exam Results ? For Students

As we approach the time of the year when the exam results are awaited, it is common to witness harried students pulling their hair out. While giving exams is in itself a huge stressor, for most of the students, the stress persists until the results! The following are some of the points to keep in mind for students dealing with poor exam results:

Identify and re-focus on your strengths:

Remember, you are the one who has put in the efforts towards the exam, and therefore you are the best judge of your own performance. You should evaluate your own performance, and try to improve upon your strengths. Identifying the positives would help you be more optimistic towards the future.

Avoid dwelling on the past, and seek feedback:

Instead of sitting and moping over your poor results, it is a better idea for you to seek feedback, both from parents and teachers, or even peers, in order to re-evaluate yourself, and to be able to identify areas to be worked upon. It is necessary to find out where you have gone wrong, so that you can improve your productivity and efficiency by improving upon these weaknesses, learning from past mistakes, and not wasting your efforts again.

Acknowledge your mistakes:

It is important to be open to constructive feedback, as it will help you gain a true insight about your capabilities and therefore help you have more realistic expectations from yourself. Further, you can redirect your efforts accordingly based on the feedback received.

Re-plan your future goals:

Once the results have been declared, it is important to use this as a feedback and now to instead focus on the steps that need to be taken next. Re-evaluate your original plan if the results did not meet your expectations, and plan your goals, career and future plans accordingly. Let go of the bygones, and work on moving ahead.

Evaluate your efforts, not your results:

Remember to focus not on the final grades, but also to pay attention to the effort you put in behind the exam. Even if the results do not seem to be proportionate to your results, do keep in mind the influence of various external factors, and therefore make a realistic evaluation of your efforts.

Don’t compare:

Each one of you is different in your capabilities as well as efforts. Therefore, do not fall prey to peer pressure by comparing your performance with others. Instead, be objective in your approach, and validate your efforts.

Exams are not the end of life! Remember, exams are just one part of a lifetime:

They are not the only deciding factors of your future, but are simply a stepping stone. So do not make exam results a bigger deal than the numbers that they actually are. Do not let the numbers dictate your life, and instead take a call on moving beyond the results and focusing on what else needs to be done.

See Dr. Samir Parikh's profile here