Fears that students go through

Nowadays, a lot of people, especially adolescents suffer from anxiety or depression. Due to this they become distant, angry, sad and sometimes even violent. Many of them resort to self-harm or in some cases even suicides. But what triggers these emotions? What causes adolescents these days to resort to such extreme measures? One of the main reasons are the Board Examinations. We interviewed a host of people appearing for the examination to ask what scared them or what thoughts were going through their heads. These are the most common responses given to us.

1. Social Pressure

Most of the people we talked to had the gut wrenching fear of what people would think. The uncles and aunties or mama and mami, all of them have only one question after the exam and that is ‘Beta marks kitne aaye’. The answer to that question is what people judge you on.

What a night before an exam looks like Source

The solution to this is simple. People always want to judge people and everyone wants to prove that the other person is inferior to them in atleast some sort of way. That is just to feed their ego and to fear them is to feeding their ego. So not taking what an uncle or a mami thinks is one way to deal with this.

2. Parental Pressure

One of the main fears some of these teens had were of their parents. Some parents were so strict they would not let their ward out for months keeping them caged in their homes in the name of Boards. Many also fear what their parents would feel or do if they didn’t score enough. Some fear their parents would resort to violence while some feel theirs would cry and you would be subjected to countless hours of taunts and insults.

For this the solution is very simple. A parent will love their child no matter what. No matter how badly you screw up or how much you think your parents hate you, they are always on your side.

Exams have been around long enough Source

3. Career Options

Good marks = Good jobs. Everyone knows that marks would get them into a good college and a good college would mean a good job. That causes anxiety in a student and actually does more bad than good.

Well, everyone knows you have to work hard in life to get what you want but what most people don’t get is a good college doesn’t always mean a good job or good marks don’t always mean a good college either. There are a lot of jobs in this world and instead of getting a job based on their marks they should strive for marks that would get them a job they want.

4. Peer Pressure/ Competition

India has a huge population and a huge population means a lot of competition. Many students fear scoring less but what they fear more is their friend scoring more. Most of us, at one point of time have heard something like “Sharma ji ke bête ko dekho, uski 95% aaye hain”. The fear that your friend, a person who’s been with you the whole year, done the same things as you and yet scores more than you is actually a fear present in a lot of people. Like the famous quote by Farhan Qureshi: “[after finding out Rancho topped their exam] that day we learned, when your friend flunks, you feel bad, when he tops, you feel worse. “ Well there is no solution to this problem except you should be happy for your friend instead of competing with him.

He has no idea what lies ahead in his life Source

5. Performance Anxiety

Some people have the fear of screwing up an exam and pray to every god they know to help them pass. You would be surprised to know that most of them, don’t. Not that they didn’t study for it or they aren’t smart enough but the lack of confidence they have, results in them messing up answers which they have learnt and do know.

A lot of students suffering from performance anxiety are very intelligent but the lack of confidence in themselves results in them performing poorly. All you need is a little faith in yourself and you might perform better than you ever expected.