Advice on Overcoming Testing Stress from a Cyberschool Graduate

By Jason Berning

Ever get stage fright, or just that feeling that your stomach is aiming for a gold medal in gymnastics? If yes, you can understand my very first experience in state testing, and it all begins with the first realization that I was going to be tested. When I was in the second grade, I had been having trouble with my reading for years, and I had a hard time caring about my reading ability until I found out I was going to be tested on my reading skills. You can imagine my utter shock and dismay, after all we were talking about the student who pretended to read the last chapter of Peter Pan just to be done with it (by the way, that was a bad idea). For the first time, I realized that I had to take my schoolwork seriously.

When testing finally came around in the third grade, my stomach was aiming for gold. I started the test and found myself reading a short story about a woman looking at a cat. It bored me out of my skin, but I had to keep going. Ultimately I finished reading the story but it took most of my time to read it. So I was able to answer only a few of the questions and thinking back, they were likely the wrong answers. Once I was done with that first day of testing, I ended up feeling sick and had to lie on the couch for a while just to settle down.

The next day at another location, I found that the place I was going to be doing the math tests looked like a haunted house (it still does today). After getting all the testing done, I was a wreck and I wanted to move on. When the scores came back, my reading score was unsatisfactory. While it was not a surprise, it helped us to see that my math score had dropped not because of my math abilities, but because of my skills in reading the questions. Also, while my score was unsatisfactory it did not hold me back a grade (in Colorado, state test scores do not determine whether you go on to the next grade). Thus, we were able to take some more guided action to help me with my reading.

The potential was built up in me, but I needed good reading material that I could get into to foster that reading potential (something that was not school designated where the dog dies and the princess is saved). We did find a book series I could get into, and when I took my test again later, I had a 99% improvement in my reading score. In addition, I found that I was far less stressed in all of the future tests I had to take. While I still got a little nervous, I was far less and was able to channel that nervousness into positive energy that made me do better.

What do I want you to take away from reading about my experience? Quite simply, please take the tests! I am in college now, and I am constantly tested on the subjects I read about, but even outside of college I am tested. Want your driver's license? Well you will be tested, and you do not want to learn to handle testing stress behind the wheel. These tests can really help you learn how to cope with stress and channel it into productive energy. Also, it can give you an honest look at where you are at, and that is nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed at because once you see where you need to improve, you will know where to improve. Your teachers are there to help you with those improvements.

Also, you will not be held back here in Colorado, the state and the teachers just want to see where you are at to make sure that you get what you need to thrive as much as possible. Remember, you are not the only one to get nervous about tests, and likely when you test there will be others in the room who feel the same way as you. If you doubt that, just think of me and realize that you have here a written confession on being stressed for tests from another person.

Your fellow overcomer in testing stress,
Jason Berning

Jason Berning