Study‐skills counsellor Eileen Tracy advises candidates to keep examinations in healthy perspective. It is, perhaps, ironic that a book on examination success should question the value of good examination results. Yet a clear understanding of the real – and often overrated – value of examination success is perhaps the single most helpful insight in enabling students to achieve it.
Tracy shows students how to keep calm and perform better in their examinations by turning their focus away from results and towards the learning process. She explodes myths about examinations, exposes irrational fears about success and failure and offers students critical emotional resources in facing academic pressure. She argues that examination results are more valued in today’s world than education itself. She blames a widespread but mistaken notion that exam success spells all‐round success. “Yes, grades matter,” she states, “but attitude matters more. Good grades do not guarantee a good career, – or even a happy life. But exam propaganda fosters a climate of panic that weakens students’ performance. Some swot to the point of collapse. Others rebel and some even give up. Add to this a host of new stresses at college and university and it becomes almost impossible for anyone to thrive on learning for learning’s sake.”
The book’s first part explains how to avoid exam panic by reducing stress and promoting well‐being. It reassures students that exams do not sort out winners and losers. It also discusses student rivalry and explains the hatred of learning that makes so many students shun their libraries and books. Part two offers a range of study skills to improve work and overcome procrastination, explains how memory works, shows how to plan revision, coursework and examination essays, details how to make good use of information sources and describes how to score points in the examination. Fear of failure often leaves students unable to get started or keeps them up all night revising. Tracy helps students to fight this fear and fulfil their true potential.
