How to Avoid Burnout During Exams

At this point in the school year, you’re probably feeling like exam season is never going to end. This is completely understandable! The Diploma Programme is a long two years, and your cohort has faced more challenges than normal. Here we’ll take you through our top 3 tips for avoiding burnout in exam season. 

Tip 1: Create a routine to avoid burnout

Without a routine, your days are going to feel even more chaotic than they already are. Adding some order into your days can help reduce your stress levels and assist with avoiding burnout in exam season. 

Most students find that they have two kinds of days during exam season. You’ll have days with exams and days without exams. This may seem obvious but it’s worth thinking about when creating your exam season routine.

On days with exams, you’ll want to plan for time to eat before leaving for the exam. There’s nothing worse than getting hungry while you’re trying to focus! 

While days without exams give you flexibility, mirroring the exam day timings can be helpful. This can help get your body used to focusing during the same times of day when you’ll have exams. It can be very easy to sleep in and stay up late when you’re on study leave. However, this will make it much harder for you to be on top form during morning exams! 

Tip 2: Schedule down time into your day

It would be impossible to do nothing other than revise and avoid burnout! Scheduling time into your day when you can do something not exam related is really important. By setting aside a chunk of time and restricting the activity to that time slot, you’ll help yourself avoid using it as a way of procrastinating. 

Perhaps you could spend the last 30 minutes before you go to bed watching a TV episode or reading a non-academic book. I watched an entire season of Modern Family during my exam period! Having something lighthearted and funny to watch before I went to sleep really helped me improve my sleep quality. 

Another option is to plan to go for a run or do a workout video on YouTube during a time when you find it hard to focus. This will help break up the hours of revision. My favourites while I was at university were these dance workout videos. They’re super silly and fun but still get your heartrate up. 

Taking time to rest during the exam period is essential to avoiding burnout. The key thing here is to plan your breaks so that they don’t become procrastination!

Tip 3: Remember that this is the final push! 

By now you’ve been working on getting your IB Diploma for almost two years. You’re so close to being done! 

Try crossing off exams as you go for the satisfaction of knowing that they’re done. This can help you get perspective on the situation and see that you are so close to the finish line. Make a stack of all your notes that you don’t need anymore so that you can see how much you’ve learnt. 

When it gets overwhelming, take a step back and remember why you’re doing this. Is it to get into the university you’ve always wanted to attend? Is it so that you can move to a new city or country? Keeping your reason why in mind will help maintain your drive.

Most importantly, it’s a matter of days now. This is your last chance to show the IBO how much you know and how hard you’ve worked! If you’re looking for some last minute support before your exam check out our private tuition here. We’ve also got lots of previous blog posts on revision skills that are definitely worth checking out.