TAKING YOUR MENTAL HEALTH TO HEART
GETTING OVER GRADE ANXIETY
TAKING YOUR MENTAL HEALTH TO HEART
GETTING OVER GRADE ANXIETY
Author: Suzanne Vallières, psychologist, speaker, author and mother
Have you ever felt your heart pounding before you look at your grade on an exam, or obsessed over the thought of failing?
School means assessments, and assessments mean grades. For some students, the thought of getting a bad grade or failing is petrifying. This can lead to negative consequences like:
- Having trouble eating or sleeping before assessments
- Not studying in order to avoid thinking about an exam, or studying so hard you don’t do anything else
- Going blank during the exam due to stress
It’s normal to feel a little anxious about assessments, but it’s important to keep your fear from overwhelming you. Remember that we go to school to learn, and we learn by making mistakes. It’s normal not to do everything perfectly all the time!
Looking beyond grades
Grade anxiety often comes from giving grades too much importance. We have to go to school and do our best to succeed, but we also have to put grades into perspective.
A grade represents your level of expertise in a subject: what you have understood and learned. In other words, you have mastered X% of what the teacher wanted you to retain. And this percentage is not set in stone: with studying and a little extra help, you can always improve!
❌Remember that grades are not a reflection of your:
🙅♂️Value as a person
School is an important part of your life, but grades are not the measure of a person. You have strengths and skills in many areas outside of academics. You may have strong soft skills (e.g., empathy, creativity, generosity) or have a talent for sports, cooking, or the arts!
🧠 Intelligence
Even if someone has trouble learning, that doesn’t mean that they’re not smart. Everyone’s brain is different. Some people have more trouble with math, others with reading, others with memorization.
🏆 Future success
Grades are important in moving from one grade to the next and making progress in your education, but a single grade or failed exam won’t determine your future.
The Key to Calm: Taking Pride in the work you’ve done 💪
In the end, what really matters isn’t your grade, but the feeling that you’ve done your best.
Being well prepared for an exam and putting in your best effort will help you stay calm during the assessment and feel proud of yourself regardless of your final grade. In any case, you can’t predict or control how you will be assessed. However, you can apply yourself to your studies, make an effort, and show up for the exam. If you do that, you’ll get an automatic 100% in terms of pride and satisfaction in the work you did.
Take an inventory of your personal strengths 💙
This exercise will help you reflect on the skills you have outside of academics.
Having a better understanding of your strengths can help you overcome the challenges you may face, because you’ll know what tools you have at your disposal. It also helps you increase your self-esteem and self-confidence and be more optimistic and resilient.
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About the author and her books
Suzanne Vallières is a psychologist who has been working in the media space since 1996. In addition to collaborating with various magazines, she draws on her 25 years of experience with children and teens in her roles as a specialized trainer, therapist, lecturer, mother of three children, and grandmother. She is the author of the successful Les Psy-trucs series, which has been translated into six languages, Le psy-guide de la discipline : pour les enfants de 0 à 10 ans, Le psy-Guide des parents épuisés, and Le psy-guide des grands-parents.
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