An exam is marketing, which is to say that you are almost doing an interview for a course about why you are a good student.

By showing that you can perform well in an exam setting, in a certain amount of time, for a number of questions, for one particular examiner who is bound to be slightly subjective, you show people who need to know how smart you are an indication of your cleverness, therefore allowing you an opportunity to study at higher value education systems. This is better then the previous system, where the family you were born into dictated the company you had a job in.

If you can perform well in this controlled setting, then there is a good chance you would be good further along in education. We can all understand a formal exam may not be fully representative of real world working scenarios, but people who work well at exams usually are indeed smarter. Actually being able to remember what you have learnt, and apply and possibly even add onto what you have learnt in textbooks, are very important but exams don’t measure that, but what they are good at is learning to show the school that you are worth the investment is what an exam is all about. Notice that the emphasis is on the fact that even during an exam, you learn, not prove.

You only do good in the world by doing an exam, the world becomes a better place when you go and do an exam.

One aspect of exam apprehension is the social humiliation of failing in front of your peers. People won’t think about you as much as you care about that reputation. The most important respect is self respect.

Some people may simply dislike exams, and be against it morally, and that is okay.

Some people may be disadvantaged during exams due to mental health conditions and it is okay if they do not or cannot perform as well as they could in other forms of measuring intelligence. A lot of education systems now have regulations in place to help those people out.

There is so much more to life then just exams, but doing as best as you possibly can in them will do a world of good. Success in exams are about 1 main thing. They are about how hard you try. How much rest you gave yourself, showing that you can be responsible for it. That you can be professional.

Start by being proud of where you are, and work as hard as you need to when you need to. Look after yourself and know that building this discipline is a foundation for a good life.