stress of first year exams

[arosagirl]

my son is coming to the end of his first year studying bio medical sciences. although he has coped ok with the course (after an awful lot of commitment and hard work) he is really panicking about his upcoming exams and is worried sick. I have no doubt on his efforts but he seems to think whatever he is revising is not 'sticking' and he's really concerned he'll fail his first year exams. does anyone have any suggestions on revision techniques or how he can calm himself down? I feel helpless!

think the thing is with medicine, I have found, it's not actually hard intrinsically conceptually etc, I'd say the science is easier than premed, (might be fooling self there) but it's somewhat extraordinarily voluminous in content so when you get behind, then more behind, then more behind, it becomes a bit impossible to catch up and then hard to keep up as you're snowed under with backlog, so in not keeping up you get even more behind.. so my top tipto anyone studying medicine, or biomed as often the syllabuses are very similar in the first year or two, is do not get behind!

@ Cafecito

I know what you mean about the volume. We have just 3 weeks til our exams, and we are still learning new stuff. The pressure is on from week one to keep up to date - yo can't afford to miss a second.

Do your exams have a purely physiological and anatomy bias or are they more clinical? You can adapt your revision to suit and learn some key areas to score plenty of points depending on the bias of the exam. In many ways clinical exams are easier, since they rely more heavily on using knowledge than pure recall of facts.

Let me know what you are facing, and I can give you some help!

By the way, are you in the States? Premed and all that...

ah thanks Metbird, yes we have loads of new material before our exams too.. aarrrff.. clinical stuff, mixed in with lots of physiology/ endo/embryology/immunology and pharmacology stuff.. arrrh... and we have a separate anatomy exam which I have not even started to contemplate yet (I always miss anatomy, due to childcare at that time of the morning) I'm London based, but didn't do A levels oh AND a big part of one exam is sociological waffling with the proper models and theories, PPD - tons of people failed it last time..

sorry for thread hijack btw

^oops bold

I think as I always got by by cramming in the past and did well on very little work, that I just need to find a whole new way of studying which as yet I do not have. (despite my advice above, I have no idea what I'm doing, myself!)

cafecito I've PM'd you

Hi all. Just wanted to thank you all again for your advice. He passed! Phew! And after all of that he passed with 72% so he's really chuffed. All of your tips must have helped. Hope all of you did well too. And hope all of you, mums and dads included enjoy the summer!!!!