For those with half term assessments, mocks in January and perhaps even GCSES this year, there is the ongoing large pressure to achieve the grades you are expected to achieve and the pressure to live up to other’s expectations (for example your teachers, or your family’s).

Forget about the pressure. The pressure drives you to work non-stop, the thought of what would happen if you ‘fail’ echoing in your mind. Not only is this bad for you, but it does not make you simply enjoy and have interest in the subject.

If you don’t achieve your expected grades in that exam, having done hours and hours of non-stop work, you would start to break down, your mental health and general well-being put at severe risk, for all that work put into the exam will seem as if it is for ‘nothing’ and there would not be a single good outcome

Relive yourself of this pressure. If you do, you will start to see exams as a fun test to test your understanding of the subject, that it does not test whether you lived up to everyone’s expectations or not. If you do, you may even see revision as an interesting way to get smarter and improve your own knowledge, that revision is not the demon everyone fears.

I hope many of you seeing this will understand upcoming test/exams are not as pressurizing as they seem, no matter the stakes of failing or achieving success, for life is short, and you should enjoy it as much as you can.