214. Respect The Exam

Join William for a quick pep talk on showing due respect to the exam you're sitting, with surprising benefits for your motivation, enjoyment of the study process and even your end result.

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Hosted by William Wadsworth, memory psychologist, independent researcher and study skills coach. I help ambitious students to study smarter, not harder, so they can ace their exams with less work and less stress.

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Chapters

• 0:00 A Pep Talk On Disregard
• 0:32 Gottman’s Insight And Thin Slicing
• 1:04 Defining Disregard Toward Exams
• 2:46 Why Disregard Creeps In
• 4:18 How Disregard Hurts Performance
• 5:12 Play The Game To Win
• 7:17 Reframing Challenges As Growth
• 8:54 Coaching Help And Next Steps

Transcript

William Wadsworth: 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Exam Study Experts Podcast. Today's episode is a mini-pep talk about a challenge that can sometimes emerge with our relationship with our exams. According to Dr. John Gottman, who is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Washington and a renowned relationship analyst, the most important sign that a human relationship is in trouble is the partners in the relationship showing contempt for each other. If any of you have read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, you'll have come across Dr. John Gottman's work. Malcolm Gladwell talks about that when he talks about thin slicing and he's presented as this kind of amazing figure who can kind of watch a couple at a table for just a few seconds and immediately tell you their likelihood of divorce. Anyway, so that's that's that's that John Gottman, if you happen to have read that particular book. Now, the word contempt, uh this word contempt can be defined as a disregard for something that should be considered. Now, the word contempt itself, I think, is quite a strong and quite emotive word. Uh, so I'm gonna switch to a slightly softer version, disregard for today's pep talk, uh, because we're gonna be exploring the challenge of developing a disregard for what our exam is asking of us. This may sound like a slightly strange thing to say, but it's a surprisingly common thing that can uh creep up on many of us. So today I want to talk about why we can develop disregard for what our exam is asking of us, the problems that can cause, and of course, crucially, what we can do about it. The topic of today's pep talk was inspired by uh my having had a few versions of a similar conversation recently through my coaching work with students and scholars of different ages at different stages who were preparing for an exam, only they were developing some kind of sense of disregard for that exam, either the exam as a whole or certain components and elements of it. You know, for example, it might be some sense that the examiners aren't good at setting the exam. Uh, perhaps we feel we might know better than the examiners, um, you know, particularly if we have some expertise in that field. You know, maybe there's some sense that uh the material or certain parts of the material just isn't kind of relevant to me and my goals. Uh, you know, maybe there's some sense that the things that this exam are testing are just not very good measures of my aptitude in this particular field. You know, it's this kind of thing. And there's certainly no judgment from me here. You know, these might all be perfectly valid things to feel. You might have a point. Um, but the issue is that when we start to uh when these kind of ideas that, you know, we have this disregard start to take root, it can lead to us engaging differently in the exam prep process uh with undesirable results, as we'll explore in a moment. So why does this come about? Well, you know, losing respect for your exam, I think this is especially likely to come about, I see it particularly often when the exam has kind of been foisted upon us uh without our having chosen it. Say, for example, you're at a school that requires you to take a particular subject option, uh, or you might be in a particular profession where your employer uh is requiring you to take an exam, or your kind of career progression path uh is requiring you to take an exam that you personally don't see much value in. But this kind of disregard can develop for other reasons as well. So, you know, perhaps you do have a bit of expertise in that particular field and you have a view on how your field should be examining that material. And it's a little bit different to what's how the exam process works at the moment. Another place the disregard comes from, if we're really honest with ourselves for just a moment, it can come from the fact that we we're simply struggling with the material, either as a whole or certain components of it. So we might be finding it hard to learn the detail for a particular part of the exam. So we tell ourselves that it's a low-value exercise to be asked to learn all that detail when in the real world you could just easily look it up. Or perhaps you're finding a particular topic with the exam tricky. So we end up telling ourselves that you know that topic is a little bit less relevant, you know, you're not really going to be using that material in the course of your further study or your career in that field, for example. We want to watch out for some version of these sentiments creeping in. As I say, they're surprisingly common. You know, most of us have some version of these uh from time to time. And again, I'm not saying you're not right. You might well have a point, you might, it might be absolutely valid. The thing is, if we spend too much time indulging this kind of thinking, it can give us problems as people that are going to ultimately be taking that exam. So, in an extreme case, if you've got quite a strong disregard for those exam requirements, you know, that can result in a sort of basically starting to self-edit the syllabus to suit our preferences. You know, we focus only on the areas or mainly on the areas we consider more relevant and pay less regard to the rest. A lighter version of disregard can mean we still may engage in the full syllabus, but but we don't enjoy doing so. We we resent being asked to do so. Um we study what's asked of us, but we don't sort of feel good about it. You know, we enjoy our studies less, we find it harder to find that motivation, we're more likely to procrastinate, and so on. So at best we end up having the a kind of a less pleasant road to exam day, and at worst, our exam performance is going to be adversely affected. So, what can we do? Well, over the years, uh many people uh have asked me what I think of the exam system, uh, particularly people I sort of have come across socially when I tell them about what I do for a living, uh, you know, they'll say uh things that they you know often ask about, you know, what do I think about kind of the exam system we have in uh you know here in the UK? Um so for my international listeners, you know, we we take GCSE exams around age 16 and A-level exams around age 18 uh or thereabouts. Um, and you know, people are often curious in my views, you know, is it right we ask our young people to take these exams? Do we have asked for too many exams, too young, exams at the right age? Is the exam system broken and in need of reform and so on and so on? Um and uh kind of my response sometimes surprises people, given my profession revolves around supporting people in their exam prep, both in the UK exam systems and and all around the world. And it's and it's simply that I I don't really have a view on what the exam system should be or how we should change it. Like I think these are important questions to be asked, and but as someone that's immersed in helping people uh playing the exam game, I've never been too interested in debating what the rules of that game should be. For me, the game is what it is. For better or worse, I just want to focus on helping people play the game to win. And my gentle encouragement to anyone preparing for an exam would be to try and lean into a similar perspective. Yeah, you might design the game differently, were it up to you. You might have even chosen a different game, but we're not in a situation, at least yet, where those decisions are yours to make. You know, all you can do is take that game in front of you and play it to win. My wife and I uh laid an elderly relative to rest some years back, and and the words on the gravestone read simply Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might. It's a famous biblical quote. Uh in other words, seize the present to do what needs to be done. Put your full energy, focus, and drive into the work in front of you. So while you might not fully agree with how the exam is set, what's on it, the value, relevance, and so forth, that's okay. Let's acknowledge that perspective, then put it to one side, roll up our sleeves, dive in, and do the very best job we can, regardless. Those bits we're finding tricky or challenging, can we try and reframe them, not as deficiencies in the exam, but as opportunities for us to learn and grow our skills and knowledge, including in that kind of meta-skill of being able to take an area or an aspect of that exam you're finding a bit tricky and find a way to overcome that challenge and master it. I talked about exams being a game throughout the last uh few remarks, and I think that can be a helpful way of framing it in these kinds of situations. Yeah, you might not have designed the exam as it is today, but this is the game we're playing, and since we're playing it, let's play it to win. I've been coaching people to win in their exams for going on a decade now, and my clients, I'm very happy to say, have an extremely high win rate in exams of all kinds. So if I can support you in playing to win and training the smart way, please do reach out to me for a little personal coaching. Head to examstudy expert.com forward slash coaching. So let's give the game you're playing as much respect as you can. Let's play that game with all your might. Wishing you every success.

SPEAKER_01: 8:44

If you've got exams coming up, you can now get all of William's favorite tips and tricks to save you time and get you higher grades, all in one handy cheat sheet. Grab your coffee at examstudiexpert.com slash free tips. Thanks again for listening, and see you soon.