#1: Keep it all in perspective: I often make things worse for myself because I’m a perfectionist, and if I’m going to do something, I want to do it to the best of my ability. But sometimes pushing myself too far and completely stressing myself out just isn’t the way to go. I find that thinking about things in the long run is really helpful -- so like right now, these are only my second year exams, they’re probably the least important out of all three years, I’ve put in my best, and I’ve learned a lot of really cool stuff while I’m at it (want to know whether we should revise the list of NTDs? Or why calling sex tourism “romance tourism” is seriously problematic, or whether the current global situation can be described as global apartheid, or whether the Twitter Revolution exists? Or whether non-traditional families are harmful/beneficial to psychological adjustment? I’m your girl!) 

#2: Take breaks. Sometimes you need them! Like I’ve been working pretty solidly over the last week, and today I just felt dead...so I’m taking the evening off in order to recuperate. Everyone reaches a point where they can’t do anymore -- instead of forcing yourself to do subpar work, take time off so that when you get back to it, you’re refreshed and ready for action! 

#3: Treat yourself: Okay, not going to lie, this is my main way of keeping myself sane during exam term. I love going out for lunch every now and then, even if it’s just somewhere quick like Itsu or Pret, or treating myself to my fave coffee/chocolate from Hotel Chocolat. Ordering stuff online is also fun (there is nothing nicer than finishing a day by going to the Porter’s Lodge to collect an ASOS delivery that you’ve been looking forward to for ages). 

#4: Don’t isolate yourself: Everyone’s going through the same stressful period that you are. It can be harder to spend time with friends because people aren’t going out, and (if you do an arts subject) you don’t have lectures, and therefore it can get pretty lonely at times. Try and have meals with friends (either cook together or go to the buttery together), or organise quick coffee breaks. You could even organise study sessions (if you’re the kind of person who can work with friends), or go to the library with friends so that even if you’re not talking to each other, they’re around. 

I’ve only really had it happen to me once, and as far as I can tell it was a problem of not being as well-prepared as I thought I was, so I guess my first advice is to make sure that you have revised well, particularly in terms of doing practise essays and forcing yourself to write on material you may be less confident on in timed conditions.

Other than that, all I can say is: if you feel it coming over you, take a moment to breathe deeply and try to relax yourself, and then - even if you really can’t come up with a good answer - make sure you write something down, even if you know it’s poor or just in note form. You might be able to work your way out of it if you begin to concentrate and focus again, and in any case, better to pick up some marks than no marks. You may well even do better than you think: in many cases the problem will not really be not knowing the material at all, but convincing yourself in that moment that you don’t know what you’re doing and aren’t good enough.

I’m really sorry to hear you’re going through this. My immediate advice would be to talk to someone in college that you trust, perhaps your tutor or even the college nurse, in order to potentially put some adjustments in place for your exams, such as taking exams in college if that might be less anxiety inducing for you. The sooner you talk to someone about this the sooner they can help you. 

My number one tip is always just keep calm - yes, it’s important to work for your exams so you feel like you’ve done as well as you can, but also it’s my opinion that the atmosphere at Cambridge does nothing to help stress levels this term. Make sure you get outside every day, go for walks, watch films with your friends, keep up extra-curriculars (to at least some extent) and just make sure you look after yourself first and foremost, as the exam results will follow. Remember that in order to get into Cambridge you have to be good at taking exams, and while these ones feel different to those at school, you’ll get through them. First year exams are about getting to grips with the exam system here, so if you don’t do as well in practice papers as you have done at school, remember that you’re only a third of your way through your course, and you’ve got plenty of time to improve your exam technique. 

T.I.M.E.D E.S.S.A.Y.S – I didn’t write a single non-timed essay in third year. I’d do all my prep like normal, which involved a very detailed essay plan, and then actually write my essay by hand under timed conditions (best to tell/vaguely ask for permission from supervisors if you’re going to do this). You only get better at things you practice, so it only makes sense to do as many timed essays as possible in 3rd year. 

The other thing is consistency. My DoS actually let me look at my full breakdown from second year and it was really surprising – for all the papers I got a 2.1′s in, my essays for those papers were always two 1sts, and one 2.2/3rd. My DoS said that’s pretty much always how it goes – 2.1 essays are fairly rare actually, people who get 2.1′s usually just can’t comfortably answer 3 questions. So to help with this – one of my best subject friends and I arranged to always do different questions for supervisions and then trade essay notes at the end (we each did significant further work in exam term but having someone else’s work as a base is really helpful to cut through the basics). That way, we doubled the amount of questions we could handle. You should also make sure you’re not phoning it in – if you don’t have time to properly write or outline an essay, don’t bother. The time is yours, it can be better to abandon 1 of 3 essays and concentrate on writing 2 good ones vs half-doing all 3. 

Lastly, in a lot of ways it fundamentally comes down to number of hours spent in exam term. You want to get ahead on your dissertation so that you can comfortably get it written during the break between lent and easter (however long your best estimate your dissertation will take, double it – they have a way of becoming monsters). Then, once you’re done with that, you really need to be putting in good shifts all day, every day, until exam term is done. This was my exam term schedule and while you don’t have to follow that exactly, you do want to be putting in serious shifts. Obviously, you can work more during terms 1 and 2 and that will help lighten exam term a bit but really, exam term is going to suck anyway, you might as well have fun during michaelmus and lent and have exam term be 10% shitter.