u/Deep-Exit6847

This has been bothering me for months and I finally wanted to ask if anyone else experiences this because it is starting to affect my confidence a lot. I shower every day sometimes twice if I went to the gym. I wear clean clothes, use deodorant and even changed body wash recently because I thought maybe that was the problem.

The weird thing is that when I am at home I feel completely fresh. The moment I leave the house and walk around for even twenty minutes I suddenly feel like I smell sweaty especially under my arms and around my shirt collar. One day at work I kept thinking people around me could notice it and I became so distracted that I could barely focus on conversations.

I asked my sister honestly if she ever noticed bad odor from me and she said no but now I cannot tell if this is an actual hygiene problem or if I became overly aware of normal body smells. I also noticed it happens more when I wear certain fabrics even if the clothes are freshly washed.

Has anyone figured out a reason for this or found small changes that actually helped because I feel like I am trying everything and still overthinking it every single day.

I genuinely thought I had figured out the perfect revision method at the start of Year 12. Every single day after college I would spend hours making the neatest notes possible. Different highlighter colours perfect headings little sticky tabs on every page. My folders looked incredible and honestly I felt productive every time I opened them.

The problem was that I was barely testing myself. I was rewriting information again and again because it felt easier than answering actual questions. Whenever my friends talked about past papers I kept saying I would start them later once my notes were complete.

A few months later we had our first proper assessments and I walked into the exam feeling weirdly confident. Then I opened the paper and realised I knew the content but had no idea how to apply it under pressure. Especially in Biology and Economics where the mark schemes were so specific. I remember sitting there staring at a question that looked familiar but my mind just froze.

When the results came back I did much worse than expected and it honestly annoyed me because I had worked so hard. One of my teachers looked at my notes and literally said these are beautiful but your exam technique is missing. That sentence stayed in my head for days.

After that I completely changed how I revised. I still make notes but now I spend way more time doing timed questions blurting active recall and marking my own answers harshly. At first it felt uncomfortable because I kept getting things wrong but after a while my grades slowly started improving.

The funniest part is that my folders look messier now but my actual understanding is way better than before. I wish someone had told me earlier that feeling productive and actually being prepared for A Levels are two very different things.

Did anyone else have a revision method they thought was amazing until exams exposed it completely