I am pretty sure that the subject it self isn’t RP related but if I become a better man through it then why not ask? So I would like to know your opinion and your approaches/ mentalities on this if you have gone through something similar. A little bit of necessary context: I am 17 years old student-athlete and in June I will give the most important academic finals of my life so far . In my country those exams are the only way to get to a public university and there is a strong belief in our society that these exams are the most important ones of your life and tell us, ( the students ) that those decide our future. Generally, students are very afraid of these exams and a lot of them see them as their biggest challenge in their life and if they achieve the grade that they want, as their greatest accomplishment so far. The whole educational system is build around those exams at the end of the senior year of high school. Some students start preparation in our first year of high school ( basically around 14-15 years old) but most of them start the serious preparation towards the end of the second year, basically one whole year before the exams. I started in late August because I had athletic responsibilities.

I said all of this just to give you some context about what those exams mean and the cult around them. Pressure is high, tensions are high , anxiety is high, depression is high. These are the main feelings that a typical student experiences throughout the year but amplified to the end of the year as the finals approach. This is also the main motivation for the whole year. The fear of failure , the fear of not disappointing their parents, the fear of being left out. This of course can create a lot of stress. I have seen classmates break down because they did not get the grade they wanted to a test , I also have a friend who studied like crazy last year but blacked out on the exams and failed by far.

So where do I stand ? Well, I’m not so sure. I know all of those feeling as I was a troubled kid earlier in my teens but have mostly overcome them. Sports have taught me how to handle the anxiety and pressure and no matter what the outcome of the game is you can get back up. But I will admit that I still fear failure. Not even close as before but still, if I think about failing I get anxious. My approach from the end of August is not to get overwhelmed from stress and focus at the work at hand and I think I have mostly managed that apart from some weeks that I procrastinated a lot. Now, we wrote some tests in school and saw that I am behind in some subjects from my classmates and honestly this was the best that I could give with how I approached things. It seems that constant anxiety and fear pushes them to study way more than I do with the risk of burning out. I have to change my approach or mentality because I don’t know what else to do but I want to do it in a healthy way. Another mentality that i see and sometimes found myself is that I won’t let X classmate write better than me but I think it’s not a good way to think like that and it shows great insecurity.

If what you do one thing is how you do everything, then how I approach this challenge is how I approach everything, so I really want to find a healthy sustainable way that results in big success. So if you have went through something similar, what was your approach/ mentality that helped you succeed ? Also if you have any criticism or recommendations around my case please comment it. ( sorry for the long post I thought it would be smaller )