DURING THE ACTUAL TEST, PRETEND YOU ARE JUST PRACTICING.MAYBE YOU’V...
2. During the actual test, pretend you are just practicing.Maybe you’ve already allowed your anxieties to roam out of bounds by speculating about what wouldhappen if you don’t do well on the GMAT exam. Now you are seeing that this is a mistake, so go ahead andwrite down your fears of failure. What would happen? Would low scores keep you out of business school? No.Perhaps you wouldn’t get into your first choice program, but some things in life can’t be predicted. If you thinkhard enough, you can surely remember a time when things didn’t work out the way you wanted them to, butthey turned out for the best anyway. It’s good to make plans and work to achieve your goals, but it’s alsoimportant to put your goals and plans in perspective.If you didn’t get into your first choice school would you be a less-worthy person? No. Would your fam-ily stop loving you? No. Would the world come crashing down around you? Of course not.Thinking about your fears in this way helps keep them in perspective. You know the GMAT exam is seri-ous business; that’s why you are preparing for it. But if you can persuade yourself to think about it as a gameyou want to play (see the sidebar above), you can control your fear and replace it with a simple, burning desireto win. You have nothing to be afraid of now. You just practice and prepare so that you will succeed on thetest.Just Do ItHalf the battle with test anxiety is how you thinkabout the test and what kinds of messages you are givingyourself about the exam. The other half is what you doto prepare. These two halves are interrelated: If youare paralyzed by negative thoughts (“I’m not ready; I don’t have enough time; I’m not smart enough; I don’twant to think about the GMAT exam”), you are going to have a hard time getting yourself to do the work youneed to do.On the other hand, if you can somehow get yourself to stop thinking those unproductive thoughts, youcan start preparing. The very act of doing something makes you feel better and leads to more positivethoughts, which makes it easier to continue working.Therefore, it makes sense to just begin work. Start by making a study plan based on the times you haveavailable to study and on your assessment of your practice test results (see the section “The Study Plan” ear-lier in this chapter ). Creating a study plan is easy. You have time to do it. Once you have it in place, you justfollow it. You choose success. If you have not already made your study plan, what are you waiting for?Once you have created a study plan, stick to it as though you had no choice. Of course, you do have achoice. You are choosing how you want your future to unfold. You are doing this for yourself.
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S T U D Y S K I L L S
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