Hi, I’m Thomas Frank, and this is Crash
Course Study Skills. Henry Fonda was a famous actor with a career
that spanned 54 years and included starring roles
in classic movies like 12 Angry Men and Once
Upon a Time in the West. He was one of the most well-known and successful
actors of his time, bringing home an Oscar, two Golden
Globes, and even a Grammy before retiring. So it might surprise you to learn that Fonda
had a lifelong struggle with performance anxiety. In fact, even when he was 75 years old, with over half
a century of acting experience under his belt, he would
often throw up before beginning stage performances. But, despite his anxiety and sudden lack of lunch,
Fonda would still step out from behind the curtain and
give the audience the great performance they expected. That’s because he understood one of the unavoidable
facts of life – a fact that the author Steven Pressfield
put so well in his book The War of Art: “Fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same
code of necessity, which dictates that the
battle must be fought anew every day.” If you’re a student, you might not be performing
on a stage or facing down an enemy army, but your tests and exams are battles all their own,
and they often come with the same feelings of anxiety. These feelings are normal, and you’ll never
truly banish them. If you’re doing work that’s important to you,
you’ll always feel some amount of anxiety. And that can actually be a good thing, because anxiety
is an indicator that what you’re doing IS important. Otherwise, you’d be apathetic about it. However, too much test anxiety can hurt you. Research has shown that high-pressure situations
can actually deplete your working memory. Additionally, stress caused by anxiety
produces a hormone called cortisol, and too much cortisol can hinder the ability
of the hippocampus to recall memories. This means that it is crucial to learn how
to manage your test anxiety. You have to learn how to perform well in the
face of it, and make sure it doesn’t consume your thoughts so you can actually solve that
geometry proof that’s staring you in the face. Fortunately, there are several techniques
and mental exercises you can use to do that. Roll the intro! [Theme Music] Test anxiety is caused by many different factors,
but today we’re going to focus on the most common
ones, which I call the Three Big Fears: Number one: A fear of repeating past failures Number two: The fear of the unknown Number three: The fear of the stakes Now, in a minute, we’re going to dig into each of these fears and work to figure out how you can combat them, but before we do that, there is one general
purpose strategy I want to share with you. The next time you feel anxious going into a test, take
out a piece of paper and spend a couple minutes writing
out exactly what’s causing you to feel that way. This has been scientifically proven to reduce
test anxiety. A study done at the University of Chicago found
that students who were given 10 minutes to write
about their fears and anxieties before a test improved their scores by an average of nearly
one grade point compared to the control group. This technique works for pretty much the same
reason that using a to-do list works: It allows you to take all those worries out of your
head and store them somewhere safe. You’ve probably been in a situation before
where you’re stressed, and a friend tells you,
“Hey, just don’t worry about it, man!” Of course, you can’t – right? You can’t just let go of the things that
are worrying you – after all, your brain
thinks they’re important. However, by writing them down, you’re unloading
those worries into an external system that you trust. Subconsciously, you know that they’re not
going anywhere. And by doing this, you free up mental resources
that you can then devote to doing well on the test. So that brings us to our first big fear: the
fear of repeating past failures. Logically, everyone knows that failure is
inevitable every once in awhile. “To err is human,” wrote Alexander Pope,
and the realm of calculus finals is no exception. But we’re not always logical. In fact, human beings have an inherent
negativity bias – a tendency to remember and give more emotional
weight to negative events rather than positive ones. This is a feature of the brain that’s pretty
useful when it comes to survival – after all, remembering which mushrooms
made you sick or not to try to shake hands with
a tiger is pretty important for survival. But the negativity bias doesn’t limit itself
to poisonous mushrooms or tigers; any negative event can create feelings of
apprehension and fear when it comes up again. So even though almost everyone does poorly
on tests and exams at least once in awhile, when it happens to you, you might naturally
fear that it’ll happen again the next time around. So how you do you actually beat this negativity
bias? Well, first, realize that you’re not defined by
your past successes or failures – despite what that insidious part of your
brain might try to tell you. While the path you’re on right now is certainly
in part a product of your past choices, it’s not
a path with a predetermined destination. At any time, you can choose to do things
differently than you did in the past. If you’re ready to do that, you need to start by
analyzing your past mistakes and gathering as
much information about them as you can. After all, you can only improve if you know
what you were doing wrong before. Let’s go to the Thought Bubble. Elite chess players understand this concept
really well. While they spend a lot of their practice time
playing games and studying the openings and
endgames of players at higher ranks, they also dedicate a ton of time to analyzing their
own past games – especially the ones they lost. By doing so, they can start to correct bad
habits and uncover patterns in their playing, which
can then be tweaked or improved in the future. So take a cue from these chess players – as well
as from elite performers in pretty much any other
discipline, be it opera singers or figure skaters – and review your past exams
to see how you can improve. Start by getting your hands on a copy of
your past exam; if your teacher doesn’t usually hand these out
or let you take them home, talk to them after class
and ask if you can at least look it over. And while you’re talking with them, also
ask for feedback – especially if your exam contained short-answer or
essay questions where there’s no concrete answer. Once you’ve got a past exam in your hands,
review the mistakes you made. Don’t just acknowledge your mistakes; for each
incorrect question, make sure you understand
why your answer was the wrong one. If it was a complex problem – like a math
equation – identify the exact point where
you made a mistake. Additionally, make sure you know what the
right answer was, and why it was right. Before you move on, cross-reference the question
with your notes, as well. If you’re going to be tested on that question
again – like in a final exam – highlight that section
of your notes so you know it’s important. You can also create quiz questions for later
review. Overall, shoot for mastery over the material
so you don’t make the same mistake again. Thanks, Thought Bubble. The details of those incorrect questions aren’t
the only things that deserve reflection. You also need to figure out why you made the
mistakes in the first place. Ask yourself: Was I unprepared? And if so, why was I unprepared? Did I simply not put enough time into reviewing? Did I ignore the study guide? Or did I use an ineffective study method? If you feel that you were prepared, then maybe
something went wrong during the actual exam. Maybe you rushed through and made a lot of
careless errors. Or maybe you let time get away from you and
didn’t actually finish the whole exam. Or maybe that creepy AI from Ghost in the Shell
hacked your brain in the middle of the exam and forced
you to spend the whole time licking your paper. These things happen. Whatever the reason was, don’t let it get
you down too much. Remember that failure is a great teacher – and
it’s a better one than success. Since we remember our failures so well, every
one of them is a lesson and an opportunity. But you need to make sure that you use that
opportunity by making a plan for how you’ll
avoid the mistake in the future. Just saying “I’ll do better next time”
isn’t enough – you need to know exactly
how you’re gonna do better. And that’s not all you need to know. In fact, the more you can learn about your
exam in all its facets, the more comfortable
you’re gonna be. This is the way to overcome the second of
our big fears: The Fear of the Unknown. People naturally fear what they don’t understand,
and in general, this is a good thing! It’s another one of those pieces of brain
programming that’s useful for survival,
and most other animals share it with us. When I visited New York City for the first
time several years ago, I noticed that the squirrels there seemed
much less afraid of people than the squirrels
back home in Iowa – but that was because these big-city squirrels
had a lot of experience dealing with people,
and it was mostly positive. So try to gain as much experience with the
upcoming exam as you can. Now, we talked a lot about how to do this
in the last video on preparing for tests, but the general principle is to try to replicate
the test conditions when you’re studying. Do your best to get access to practice tests
and study guides, and create quizzes out of
your notes to fill in the gaps. Additionally, spend some time studying in
a classroom that looks and feels similar to
the one you’ll be tested in, and quiz yourself under the same time
constraints that you’ll face during the exam. You want to make the test feel like a familiar
old friend when you actually face it. As Scott Berkun, a professional public
speaker, put it: “By the time I present to an actual audience,
it’s not really the first time at all.” That’s the feeling you’re going for. And that brings us to the last of our big
three fears, which is the Fear of the Stakes. One of the biggest sources of test anxiety
is the feeling that this test means everything – it’s gonna define your overall grade, where
you’ll be able to go to college, and whether or not
you’ll get to work for Elon Musk some day. But in reality, you’re rarely going to come
across a test or situation that you can’t recover
from in the case that things go wrong. Trust me – I actually failed a test in college
once. And Nick over there actually failed an entire
class – twice. And, even worse, I was once fired from a job. In both cases it was totally my fault, but
I learned my lessons, I made sure I never made
the same mistakes again, and I moved on. And even if things don’t go perfectly for
you, you’ll be able to do the same thing. If that’s not comforting enough, try reframing
the test in your mind. Think of it as yet another learning opportunity
rather than as a judgement. After all, a test challenges you to recall what
you’ve learned, and as we’ve already discussed, active recall strengthens your
mastery over the material. And – at least for me – viewing a test
this way makes it seem a lot less scary. Lastly, keep in your mind that anxiety isn’t something
you always need to try to deal with on your own. If you have anxiety that’s majorly affecting your
life, don’t hesitate to ask a professional for help. Hopefully you found this week’s video to
be helpful. Next week, we’ll be switching gears and
talking about how to write great research
papers and essays. See you then! Crash Course Study Skills is filmed in the
Dr. Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio in
Missoula, MT, and it's made with the help
of all of these nice people. If you'd like to help keep Crash Course free
for everyone, forever, you can support this series
over at Patreon, a crowdfunding platform that
allows you to support the content you love. Thank you so much for your support.
