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REPRINTED FROM THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
ANXIETY: GIVING TEST TAKERS A FIGHTING CHANCE
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Once nerves are conquered, test taker has fighting chance
by Sharon Barret
For the second time in a year, the aspiring nurse was staring at two days with the National Council Licensure Examination-R.N., the state boards.
She scurried into the room five minutes before the testing began, found a chair and exhaled. This was it. The last time she’d sit five hours a day taking the tests. Win or lose, she wasn’t going to put herself through it again.
She looked around at the 4,000 other aspiring nurses. She felt confident. She was a good nurse, an "A" and "B" student, someone her instructors marked for success. Too bad their recommendation couldn’t make her a registered nurse instantly. Too bad there were "tests."
When it came to tests, her confidence was a shabby barometer of success. She’d felt confident every time every time she’d taken the tests. And every time she’s failed. One, two, three strikes you’re out. Yet, she was going for No. 4.
The proctor put the test in front of her. She took a breath and implored her brain to remember all the things she’d studied and re-studied in the last six-months.
She knew she was prepared. She’d even eaten a god breakfast. She began.
She was on the very first question when it happened. It was so sudden, uncalled for, unpredictable. She almost choked on the anxiety that flooded her body, tingling in her toes, knotting her stomach, fogging her head.
Sometimes it just froze her. But it could fool her, too. It could make her think she had control, when she was recording wrong answers because time was ticking away. She couldn’t think, she had to rush.
She took a deep breath and imagined herself on beach, water pounding against rocks. Then she told her little toe to relax and her foot followed. Soon her head had joined her body in programmed relaxation.
She was in control for the moment. But the wave of anxiety would overtake her several more times during the test. Each tie she started from the beginning, imagining herself on the beach fighting this "test anxiety" every inch of the way.
Test anxiety. Studies by colleges psychologists show 20 percent of college students have a case of it and as many as half of them require treatment.
Dr. Joseph Barr, director of Parkside Human Services, a stress clinic in Park Ridge, says one of every five students has a case severe enough to cost them a letter grade.
Barr is a psychologist who has been studying anxiety and its effects on test takers for seven years. At his year old clinic he works with test anxiety patients one on one. At his six-month-old workshop he works with groups in 4 weekly sessions.
More than 200 graduates have passed through his doors. The success rate, as personally determined as it is, ranges from 80 percent to 100 percent.
People who didn’t even know test anxiety existed before doctors started researching it 15 years ago are being cured and learning how to handle shyness, to drop off to sleep quicker and to find their over-all performance improving.
"The key to identifying test anxiety as the problem is performance." Barr said. "If students know the answers in class, if they know they know the material and then get miserable grades on exams, they probably have test anxiety.
"They’re the same students who are often, but not always who are often, but not always, active in class. They’re the people who hold post-test conferences in the hallway and realize they wrote down a number of wrong answers. They actually knew the right answers but anxiety got the better of them."
Symptoms of test anxiety include sweaty palms, knotty stomach, lack of concentration, a rapid heartbeat, nausea, dizziness, high muscle tension, a tendency to be easily distracted, and confused, forgetful and, in extreme cases, vomiting and diarrhea.
"The signs can be scary," Barr said. "They feel helpless to manage the situation. Over arousal is a priority for the body. It’s very difficult to perform intellectually under that kind of arousal. Just because you understand what is happening doesn’t mean you can control it. We teach them relaxation techniques. We help them take charge of their own experience."
The experts - psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors - who deal with cases of test anxiety every day say its causes vary from parents who expect too much to students who are overachievers, have an excessive need to please people or have too large a fear of failure.
What brings it on or makes it recur is anyone’s guess. In some cases, it can be stimulated by the very word "test." It could be the mere announcement of a test, studying for it, walking to the site, seeing a question you don’t know how to answer, seeing other people finish.
"Instructors can make it easier," Barr said. "But if they do, that’s just a short-term solution. Eventually, these people are going to come up against someone who isn’t going to make that change. There’s the presentation to the board, or a report to the boss, the same type of situation but in the work world."
October 6, 1983