Top Tips is a new series from Mr Pearce, Deputy Head of UCAS, Politics Teacher and our Apply Plus programme lead, featuring helpful tips and hints ahead of the upcoming exam season.

You might have read our recent post on managing your revision time during exam season, which focused largely on two questions about how to use your time effectively to achieve excellent work output. Yet as exams approach, let’s remember that managing your wellbeing becomes just as crucial as managing your work: rest and work are two sides of the same coin. The busier you get and the higher the stakes, the more important it becomes to look after yourself. So, let’s apply the same two questions to the question of stress management during Trinity Term. 

1. What are your personal stress and wellbeing hurdles? 
   As a seasoned exam veteran, you know the kinds of wellbeing hurdles that caused you to stagger in previous years. Perhaps you get tempted to cut down on sleep, drop social contact, or neglect health and exercise habits when revision piles up. Perhaps you end up leaning on unhealthy strategies – caffeine, forgetting to eat properly, working without breaks, or engaging in “restless rest” as you binge-watch or doom-scroll to avoid revision. You know yourself well enough to recognize these potential hurdles in advance, and that empowers you to take preventive action. Remember, knowledge plus action = power, and most of these hurdles are more like old acquaintances than ambushes: you know them of old. 
   
   
2. What stress management habits have worked for you before? 
   We know that our “stress buckets” can quickly overflow during revision season, and we also know that some actions are much better than others at helping to drain the stress bucket before spills happen. You’ll already know your own “happy place habits" – the wellbeing practices that keep you buoyant and help you cope with challenges. These might reflect the NHS five ways to wellbeing: 1) Connect with others, 2) Be active, 3) Keep learning something new, 4) Give to others, and 5) Be mindful. Which of these do you already know you need to hang on to hardest as you go through the gears on revision? Be disciplined about these, just as you are with your revision. 

These kinds of habits can transform exam season. Learning something new for fun, like juggling or origami, can be a great stress-reliever. Giving to others – sending an encouraging message to a friend or making them a good luck card – offers a surprising amount of good vibes for you as well. 

For me, getting outside for some exercise every day was transformative during revision season. I went for a run four or five times a week – not particularly long, or certainly not very fast – but it transformed the way I felt, boosting my sleep, my revision, my focus, and my exam performance. Likewise, during my A Levels, I always stopped work at least an hour before I went to bed, and spent some time with some easy-read novels to wind down. I returned to favorite stories from my early Senior School days – familiar and easy enough not to keep me up late reading, but comforting and transporting enough to whisk me away from revision stress. So guess what? I revived that habit during my university finals too – I went back to what worked. What’s worked best for you in the past? 

Know this: your experience through school means you are already a successful exam hero. Your experience equips you to identify your personal stress hurdles, and you can revive the "happy place habits" that have served you best in the past. Getting the proportions right is key: revision season really does require long periods of serious, committed hard work – but you mustn’t feel guilty about an equally disciplined approach to your wellbeing. 

It’s easy to feel like taking time away from the books to look after ourselves is somehow a “tax” on our success, but the reality is quite different: balancing hard work with deliberate and effective stress management will not only improve your experience of exam term – it’s very likely to bring you higher grades too. Yes: hours spent learning are essential for learning; but our brains need recovery time just like athletes need rest days and cakes take time to bake. To put it another way: resting is investing.