Coping strategies for exam stress

Abstract

During the examination period, students experience a state of stress generated both by the exams themselves and by the fear of getting bad grades and implicitly a failure. This problem needs to be taken into consideration, not only because of the high percentage of students who suffer from it, but also because it has a negative effect on academic performance and self-esteem. Through this article, we tried to identify coping strategies used by students to cope with the exam stress (before, during and after the exam). We used the focus group technique on 32 students (divided into 4 groups). The students are from The Bucharest University of Economic Studies and they are enrolled in the pedagogical training module. Following the centralization of the opinions expressed during the discussions, we grouped the coping strategies into four categories: general coping (used during the semester), coping methods used before the exam (in the exam period), coping methods used during the exam itself, and coping methods used after the exam. As a result of this study, we believe that students and teachers have raised awareness of the importance of using positive coping strategies to lessen the stress associated with exams. The initiative to organize student stress management workshops was also launched