Spiritual alertness quiets fear in exam situations

Diane Staunton Staples

The professor had promised us a simple true/false, multiple-choice midterm examination. When we arrived in the classroom he was not there, and his graduate assistant was passing out a difficult five-question essay exam. All of the students were panicking and angry—including me. Finally I looked around, shrugged my shoulders, and said to myself, "Oh well, we're all in the same boat," and started the test.

That was a mistake. It was a surrender to the fearful, negative thinking that was going on in that classroom. Consenting to being all in the same boat, tossed by waves of panic, we all went down together. Almost all of us received grades on that midterm that were well below our normal performance.

Since that time I've realized, of course, that this was not a unique experience. I've heard of students feeling ill during an important test. One classmate told me he looked at an exam and was in a state of mental shock, unable to think how to begin for some time.

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