How Does This All Affect Grades?

You overreact so many times a day in these little ways that your body does not have time to return to a more natural and stress-free level. You remain activated and tense. This, in turn, affects you in several ways. One is that you’ll have more difficulty concentrating on studying. Your thoughts may jump around, and you’ll have trouble keeping focused on the text in front of you. Or, you may find yourself having read several pages and not remembering anything on the last two. Another result appears during tests. Reacting to a test with more stress can cause you to feel "rattled" and to make "dumb" mistakes (like adding incorrectly or forgetting obvious facts). In some cases, you might "clutch" and forget everything until the test is over. Then you can think of the answers, but it’s too late! Another common result is excessive fatigue. Being unnecessarily tense is like driving a car with its brakes partly on. The car runs out of gas sooner and the brakes wear out sooner. Same thing with our bodies—we’re just plain wiped out at the end of the day, a time when we often need to be alert for studying. Or , when you hop into bed to go to sleep, your mind "turns on" and you lie there wide awake.

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