Just the other day after P's English tuition, I flipped through his work and was surprised at his atrocious handwriting which was barely legible. I asked him what had gotten into him. His reply "I am tired." I tried to probe further but the answer remained the same. A few days later, I found that he had missed out a page in his school's mock exam paper. He also seemed to be quite distracted recently.
It then dawned on me that he was stressed. So even though examination is just next week, he gets a day off. I remembered I used to have exam stress too. And the more productive way to handle it is actually to understand where the stress comes from. Is it because one feels that he or she is not sufficiently prepared for the exam? Or is it because of the tension in the air?
I choose to believe in the latter as it is difficult to elicit an answer from a 7-year old boy. In any case, he has been consistent in his school work. To brighten up his mood, I was sharing with him that I used to love exam. Yes, I did. I looked forward to the "no lesson" days during the exam period and not forgetting the long school holiday after exam.
He then looked at me in awe, I did not know whether this new way of looking at exam sink into him. But one thing was certain, he looked happily.
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