Dealing with Junior Cert exam stress

I’m a transition year student and I sat my Junior Certificate last year. During that year, teachers repeated the same sentence every day: “Your Junior Cert is in so many days/weeks/months” and that made me panic about the exams.

I studied, but I felt like I wasn’t doing enough. I felt as if the exams were going to be on top of me before I knew it.

My mock exams were in February. I studied very hard for these exams, but I was still stressed out. I hardly slept at night with worry and my eating was disgraceful. I wouldn’t mind if these were my real exams, but it was just my mocks! Well, I got through them anyway.

When I got my results back, I still wasn’t happy with myself. I honestly thought that I could do better. So what did I do? I just got more stressed out! I also started to suffer from migraines every week thanks to not getting proper sleep. I really did put my head down to work though.

Soon I realised it was actually my Junior Cert. The day before my exams I felt sickness coming on. I really couldn’t believe it: I was very weak, had sore bones and suffered terribly with migraines. However, I thought it would just be a day thing. I had the English paper on the Monday and I couldn’t look at the paper properly, but I did what I could do. I got so upset because I felt as if I didn’t make a good effort of this paper. I went home in tears.

I went to my bed that night at about 8 p.m. to get ready for another hard day. I ended up being sick for most of the week, all because I ran myself into the ground.

I finished my Junior Cert exams and I was just so annoyed at myself for putting myself under all that stress and pressure. I got my results in September last year and I was really surprised with my results. I did particularly well!

When I’m in my Leaving Cert year, I’m going to try my best to not get stressed out over studying. I know I’ll need to get plenty of sleep and to eat properly.

Future exam students, take my word on this- don’t get stressed out over studying because you don’t want the same thing happening to you that happened to me. Take it in your stride. As long as you’re prepared, everything will turn out just fine!