“I woke up suddenly from a terrible dream. It was late night and I was sweating profusely. I felt a deep sense of anxiousness and fear, my Maths exam was the next morning. All I felt was that I would not do well, despite revising again and again. I couldn’t remember anything I had learnt. My hopes, dreams came crashing down and all I could think was what my family, friends, and relatives would label me as. I couldn’t sleep. And, then, like a flash it dawned, I AM WORKING NOW. THE LAST EXAM I EVER APPEARED IN WAS 5 YEARS BACK!”
No. Irrespective of the ending, it’s not humorous. This is a real-life narrative that relates to almost every other student around the world—an acute case of exam phobia or severe stress and anxiety before and during exams. One can hardly find a pupil who has never experienced exam phobia at least once. And, in the above tale, the person’s experience had turned into a trauma!
For better representation, let us look at some of the common symptoms or effects of exam phobia—
These are some of the most common ones. The impact can be much higher in extreme cases, as mentioned, even traumatic!
Conquering exam phobia or overcoming examination anxiety, hence, is a fundamental step towards academic success. And the root of that lies in unlocking your true brain power, or memorization acumen. The better you can learn things, remember for a long time, and recollect at the right moment, the better chances you have to score higher in exams and hence say goodbye to your phobia forever.
Here are some tactics to overcome examination fear, achieve unprecedented success from Memory Infinite’s world-class experts, a complete brain development organization—
PMS or Personal Meaning System
This system is widely applicable in remembering related complex meanings, terms, difficult words, etc. In this system, the complex (meaningless) word is broken down into personally relatable sub-words.
Common applications of this system are in remembering countries and their respective capitals, authors and their books, dates and events, diseases and concerned body parts, places and minerals, scientists and their inventions, etc.
Here’s one example. The capital of Bulgaria is Sofia.
Now, Bulgaria can be broken to – Bull Gir Gaya (Hindi phrase for a ‘bull falling’).
Sofia can be repurposed as – Sofa.
Therefore, the memorization (PMS) tactic to remember Sofia to be the capital of Bulgaria is –‘ Bull Gir Gaya on a Sofa’—fun and easy!
The Phonetic System
Phonetics means sound. The reason why we can remember long words better than long numbers is that every alphabet is connected to a sound (pronunciation) but that’s not the case with numbers.
This system links each number (0 to 9) to a certain alphabet. For example, the number ‘3’ is connected to ‘M’, 5 to L, and 7 to K.
Now, if one has to remember 357, one can say MLK or ‘MILK’. Whenever the word MILK comes to mind, the number 357 is instantly remembered.
This is a great tool to memorize formulas, data such as melting points, boiling points, atomic numbers, history dates, geographic numbers, etc.
Journey Method
This strategy is very useful in remembering long theories or texts with multiple sub-heads and points. The idea is to visualize a picture with a journey, let’s say from one’s school to home. Each point could then be linked to each segment of the journey.
For instance, if one is memorizing 10-5 points of leadership qualities, each can be mapped in that school to the home journey. The house gate can be labelled as ‘humble’ because that’s what doors are—silent guardians.
Conclusion
At Memory Infinite, we firmly believe that a successful life empty of stress, anxieties can be only achieved if one can master their mind power. And, that starts with the basic and most important situations - overcoming fear in exams, for instance and knowing how to manage anxieties. Learning faster and better is the key to that process and these memory techniques are fundamental to realize the same goal.
