Lots of students want to do well, and many of us feel pressure to perform at our best during the course. Unfortunately pressure can really stop us from doing as well as we should sometimes. In this article we’re going to look at a simple and effective way you can save yourself from being paralysed by IB pressure.
Think of a time you have felt under pressure. It could be studying for a big test, it could be learning the script for a play or practicing an instrument for a concert. In a high pressure situation like this it is very normal to avoid the thing you are meant to be doing. Have you ever done that? Have you ever found that being under pressure has actually made you procrastinate more? I have certainly felt this way. But why is this happening to you?
In the IB you want to do well, however, you cannot know how well you are going to do. This makes people feel very uncertain and uncertainty is extremely uncomfortable. In some ways human beings are very simple. If a human being is uncomfortable then we do our best to stop that discomfort. However, the IB is tricky because no matter what we do (short of quitting) the IB is not going to go away. So what lots of people do is they avoid the thing that makes them feel uncomfortable. In other words, they avoid thinking about the IB. How do they do this? They do this by texting their friends, going on Facebook, or Whatsapp, or Instagram, or YouTube or playing Halo, or Fifa, or watching Breaking Bad and so on. While this makes you feel a little bit better at the time, it makes you feel much worse later and you probably don’t enjoy relaxing as much when you feel like you should be working. To recap: thinking about the IB makes people feel scared, so they avoid it and get paralysed doing nothing.
Luckily, there is a way to beat this avoidant paralysis.
1. Breathe Try this right now. Take a deep breath, hold it, and then slowly breathe out. Do this two or three times. What you’re doing is calming your body and preparing yourself to approach the problem with a clear mind.
Imagine you have a math test in a few days, you’re scared so you have just been procrastinating all day instead of studying. Firstly you would move away from the computer. Then you would close your eyes and take a couple of minutes to breathe. You’re feeling calmer. What next?
2. Start to break the difficult stuff down. Whatever your problem is, it’s not your problem. In fact, it is multiple small problems, each of which you can definitely handle. To be successful you must break the problem down. The IB is not one thing, it is 6 subjects (and core). Each subject is itself many smaller parts – topics. Each topic is lots of little bits of knowledge, and each of those is something you can master.
3. Hopefully after this you will start to see that the problem can be managed. The next step might be to make a plan. Take five minutes with a calendar and think: what can I fit in to help me improve. A good plan is necessary for victory!
Imagine your math test is in two days. Don’t panic, remember to breathe. Now, you know that you will be tested on a few different things. So start to break the problem down. Plan to do two topics per day, one after and one before school. If topic 1 is geometry, break it down more. Decide you will practice areas, volumes and trigonometry. Pick three questions from each area and plan to do these before school. If you start to panic, just focus on the first question. That’s all you have to do, is one question. If you manage it – great! Move on to the next. If not, keep practicing and ask for help.
4. Keep chipping away at the work and you’ll soon find you’ve done a lot. If you get stuck or find yourself panicking, just repeat the above steps. If you can stay calm and keep moving forward you can guarantee maximum success. If you use the above steps this will be sure to happen.
Hopefully you can see how useful this can be. There are three steps: calming yourself down, reminding yourself that big problems are really small problems in disguise, and making a plan. If you follow the three steps you can rescue yourself from feeling paralysed.
Remember, doing some work is ALWAYS better than doing none.
Now start.
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