How to stop stressing about an exam I'm pretty sure I've messed up

[Hellocatshome]

I had a professional exam today, I'm pretty sure I've failed. I panicked and couldn't see the wood for the trees when it came to answering the questions and I feel I probably wrote a load of gibberish that may or may not have had some relation to what the question was asking.

The problem is everyone I have expressed this to seems to be convinced I've done fine and need to stop worrying.

Well I won't find out until January but my head is thumping and my heart racing with the thought of messing up and having to do it again and I cant keep feeling like this until January. Anyone any words of wisdom which may make me calm down a bit other than "it is what it is" which is DHs annoying response to absolutely everything!!!

Is worrying about it going to make any difference to the outcome? No. It's literally pointless.

It is done now. If you need to resit, then toy need to resit. Happens all the time.

Just assume you've failed and start studying for the resit (do more practice questions so that you don't panic next time). You know you know your content but just got flummoxed by exam stress and technique; if you keep it all fresh in your mind and work on your technique then you won't have to swot up for resits.

Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe.

You’re worrying about it now because you only took it today. Just assume you’ve failed and then try and put it out of your mind until janurary.

as the weeks go by it will seem less of a big deal.

What’s the very worst that can happen in January? If it’s that you have failed than you will just take it again. And that time round you will have a better idea of what to expect. But you may have passed in which case, that’s great.

I feel you OP! Was in your shoes in summer but scraped a pass luckily.

Jan is a long wait. Try and remind yourself that there's nothing you can do to influence this mark now, but that you can always resit/ repeat the course/ however it works and that isn't the end of the world.

Have a bit of time to relax but not enough to dump all your knowledge, keep ticking over but not obsessively. As a PP says, it sounds like your technique, not your understanding which is a good start.

To be honest though, what's the pass mark? It could be that you've covered a lot of ground without realising it. I realised in summer that you can feel like you've got a lot wrong and still get over the line so stay optimistic. Fingers crossed you've done better than you think!

Thank you everyone. I dont mean to sound big headed but I actually haven't found exams that difficult in the past I think that's maybe why I panicked so much when I didnt know the answers straight away and then just couldn't calm down enough to get a decent answer down.

Yes it can be retaken but this is only the first exam in a series so I have new things to learn starting in December so really really didn't want to be having to keep up with the subject of this exam while learning new things for the next exams.

But you are all right. The worse that can happen is a resit and at least I've experienced it once so second time round surely cant be as bad.