Descriptive vs Narrative Essays
The IGCSE English First Language exam places a strong emphasis on creative writing, with writing descriptive and narrative essays being
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We have received enormous amount of stress rescue requests from candidates. Especially when the exam is approaching.
We do hope parents and educators are paying kind attention to this post.
All of the candidates are pouring their hearts out to us, crying for help, because there is really no one listening to them or helping them.
Here are some of their cry out:
… and many many more.
Therefore, in today’s Q&A, we will talk about how to “handle” your stress. Hope this would help you not only in your exam, you probably will carry this throughout your life 🙂
Contrary to popular belief, we CAN NOT “handle” stress.
Stress does not exist. It is NOT a thing that you can hold nor eat 😉
Stress is a feeling resulting from your thought.
From your ‘negative’ thought to be precise.
When your mind constantly thinking on negative thoughts, for example: you are scared to fail, or not getting an A*, or not good enough comparing to your older brothers or sisters, etc…; you create a bad feeling inside your body from all the negative thoughts.
The bad feeling that you feel, is what you call ‘stress’.
The more you want to “handle” your stress, the more you think there is something wrong about you. Then, you put more pressure and create more unwanted negative thoughts about yourself.
Why would you do that then?
Shall we agree from now on you don’t try to “handle” your stress anymore?
We only take “YES” as the answer 😉
So what should you do then? Keep reading…
There is really no big deal to admit we have negative thoughts. Everyone has them.
Just the courage to admit we have them, we have already eliminated most of the bad feelings.
Aren’t you feel lighter now?
Know that you can’t fight darkness with darkness. You can only fight darkness with light. By admitting the existence of negativity, you have inserted the light of positivity.
That is the most important starting point, and it is essential for you to continue to the next step.
Now that you know stress is the bad feelings you created from all your negative thoughts.
All you need to do now is – Change Your Thoughts.
Here are some steps for you to start doing that:
When you are making your list, you will notice that you have a shift in your feeling.
You will feel must lighter, your mind is clearer, you have so much energy that you want to jump into the exam hall right now, and most importantly, you will notice a big smile on your face because now you are a much happier person!
The final step is, you must train yourself to keep this happy feeling and not let yourself slide backwards again to the negative thoughts.
Step 3 will show you exactly how to do that.
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The best way to keep your mind on positive thoughts is gratitude.
If you make a search, you will discover many great minds had always said the same thing about gratitude, and what kind of miracle it would bring to you.
Here are some of them:
“When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.” ~ Tony Robbins
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” ~ Albert Einstein
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events.” ~ Melodie Beatty
Make gratitude your daily dose in your daily life.
You could be grateful for the chance to study, the ability to read and write, to be able to attend your exam at your comfort, to have a comfortable bed to sleep on each night, the luxury of clean running water and electricity, the money that have been given to you so you could continue your education, the fresh air, all your favourite food that is always available at your reach, etc etc etc …
The list is so vast that we simply couldn’t put everything here. But you get the idea of where to start 🙂
Pay attention to how you feel. If you are not feeling good, that means your mind is currently broadcasting negative thoughts.
Immediately find anything you could be grateful for to shift to positive thought.
***
Last but not least, please know that you are a worthy human being. Everyone is.
We are all here to do something important. We are all equipped with a special talent that only we have, no one else.
And we are meant to find out what we are good at, so we could contribute this talent to mankind. When you are contributing your best talent for the benefit of mankind, you will be rewarded handsomely (a.k.a earning a lot of money). 🙂
So now, go out there and score A*!
Join 60,657 (and counting) IGCSE & AS/A Level subscribers who’ve taken our insanely valuable FREE email courses. Learn exam tips & score A* in your exam!
Lanja Omer
United Arab Emirates
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325 responses
My favorite stress buster method is gratitude.
Hi Ram,
Thanks for sharing your favourite stress buster. We believe that gratitude is a great stress buster too.
Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions and leads to greater happiness and less stress.
Thank you so much! :))
Hi Amna,
You are very much welcome! We are here to help.
Also, it would be great if you could tell me how important it is to practise variants other than mine. I am still working on getting all the past papers of my variant done so I was wondering if I should do other variants along with them or prioritize completing my own variant first.
Hello Amna,
Thank you for writing in.
First of all, we suggest that you take a deep breath and relax.
The best way to revise is to practice past exam papers. We usually suggest student to practice at least 5 years of past exam papers. Start from the latest past exam papers and work backwards. Practicing other paper variants as well can be very beneficial as it will help you familiarise with the different set of exam papers. But be kind to yourself, if you do not have much time to practice more past exam papers.
The most important thing that you can do is to take all your previous practices and revise the most common mistakes you always seem to make. Go through them with a calm mind, and not beat yourself up for the mistakes that you have made. This way you can learn what you did wrong and avoid them in your actual examinations.
Use it as an opportunity to manage anxiety. Try replacing negative thoughts with more encouraging self-talk by challenging your worried and negative thoughts. Practice focusing your attention on the task at hand, rather than getting tangled in your anxiety and thinking of the ‘what if’?
Lastly, do not forget to eat and drink healthily and to get enough sleep. Make sure you are well rested before your exams.
You can do it!
Hello IGCSE team!
I have a month left to my CAIES and I am worried that I haven’t practised enough yearly papers especially for Add Math for which I have only done 2 years. So I was wondering what the most effective way to revise Add Math (4037) is?
I expect a lot from myself since I’ve always been an A* student and I always stress when I get things wrong in past papers when I check them. And then my anxiety doesn’t allow me to focus.
I do not take any extra classes outside of school and I never have. But since these are my O2 CAIES which are the most important exam I have ever given, I am regretting not having done so, especially with online school not meeting the standard of physical school this year.
I am more nervous about what the most effective way to revise this close to the exam is apart from doing previous years’ past papers. It would be great if you could let me know since I feel like there are so many ways to revise and so little time.
Thank you so much.
Also, it would be great if you could tell me how important it is to practise variants other than mine. I am still working on getting all the past papers of my variant done so I was wondering if I should do other variants along with them or prioritize completing my own variant first.
Hello Amna,
Thank you for writing in.
First of all, we suggest that you take a deep breath and relax.
The best way to revise is to practice past exam papers. We usually suggest student to practice at least 5 years of past exam papers. Start from the latest past exam papers and work backwards. Practicing other paper variants as well can be very beneficial as it will help you familiarise with the different set of exam papers. But be kind to yourself, if you do not have much time to practice more past exam papers.
The most important thing that you can do is to take all your previous practices and revise the most common mistakes you always seem to make. Go through them with a calm mind, and not beat yourself up for the mistakes that you have made. This way you can learn what you did wrong and avoid them in your actual examinations.
Use it as an opportunity to manage anxiety. Try replacing negative thoughts with more encouraging self-talk by challenging your worried and negative thoughts. Practice focusing your attention on the task at hand, rather than getting tangled in your anxiety and thinking of the ‘what if’?
Lastly, do not forget to eat and drink healthily and to get enough sleep. Make sure you are well rested before your exams.
You can do it!