u/CompetitiveTree1487

I should preface this by saying I hate standardized tests in general and have extreme anxiety when taking them. I feel fine in the morning, but when I find my seat, I immediately start to panic and end up in a shitty headspace for the entire test. The worst was before my AP exams, when I almost puked from sheer terror.

Many others on here also have extreme test anxiety, so I won't gatekeep how I go about this.

So, this is how I combat it:

The day before the test, I take a practice test. Except I make the environment as terrible as possible. I play loud music, and my family yells and slams things. I make the room super cold and wear shorts and a t-shirt. I piss myself off even more by using crappy pens for scratch work, and I wear this one pair of socks that just suck (super itchy).

So, I've made the environment absolutely terrible, and I take the practice test as normal. When I finish it, I DO NOT look at the score, the logic behind this being that seeing my score drop 120 points would just psyche me out and make me panic more. Hence, do not look at it.

The next day, after a hearty breakfast and >8 hours of sleep, I go to the testing center. Then when I go in, I don't panic. All I can think about is how great this environment is compared to the last. It's quiet. No one is playing cymbals with pots and pans. I don't have the shittiest music I could find on Spotify blazing.

This helps me immensely, since it makes me a much more stable person before the test, and whenever I feel the panic welling, I just think about yesterday and how terrible that was.

I hope someone finds this as helpful as I did!