Name: Wellbeing during exam period | Ep 2: Manchester Voices podcast
Uploaded: 2025-01-08T00:08:38.000Z
Duration: 20 min 25 s
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This is Manchester Voices, a podcast run by students at the University of Manchester.

Hi, I'm Khadija, and you're listening to Manchester Voices, and I'm joined by some amazing Manchester Voices with me here too.

Hello, I am Dorsa, and I am a second year biotechnology student.

Hi, I'm Dara, I'm a postgrad, and I study cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology.

I am a simple management marketing student, and today we're talking about well-being and being students that are in university, we really have to manage our well-being.

So, before we get into the well-being, right, I have interesting facts that I just learnt about University of Manchester, or Manchester in general.

Yesterday, I was on my way to the Manchester Museum, which is beautiful, by the way, and I was stunned by this, like, lion-looking, not-so-lion-looking figure.

Her mum was a lion, and her dad was a tiger, and she was...

Yeah, apparently, I didn't even know they existed.

And she was bred, like, the hybrid was bred by humans, because naturally in the wild, tigers and lions never meet, except for one tiny area in India.

So, I think that was pretty interesting that they decided to make that hybrid.

I think she lived in Manchester from 1936 to 1949, and when she died, her skin was preserved with the Manchester Museum, and her name is Maud.

Okay, so, my fun fact is that Manchester's Northern Quarter is actually used as a movie set double for New York sometimes.

And, like, the first Captain America movie, and also The Crown, and some other, like, shows as well.

My fun fact is that my granddad came to university here.

He got a scholarship, and he was also the valedictorian in 1964.

No, he has two degrees, so I'm not sure if he did law here or if he did his education degree here, but that's my only fun fact.

Okay, so now we can jump into well-being.

Question number one, how do you feel in the run-up to exam?

I mean, I think I stress myself out so much until the first exam, and then when that's done, I'm so exhausted.

But, yeah, just stressed and overthinking everything is how I can put it.

When in the run-up to exams, I feel anxious, like anxious with four S's, like anxious.

I've been known to avoid exams, and I've managed to avoid exams for most of my university experience because I've gotten a panic attack before from exams.

Let's say, but that's just days before exams.

Weeks before exams, I have spikes of motivation where I'm like, yeah, let's get it.

I'm on my rocky Eye of the Tiger tunnel vision.

And then I see how much I actually have to do, and I'm making my to-do list, and then I'm demotivated again.

I'm like, nah, I'll get somebody else to do it.

But I would say that if you break your to-do list into more doable chunks or doable tick boxes, then that's helpful, that's helped me.

Because at the end of the day, whether I get anxious or not, I still have to get it done, don't I?

So I break it down into things I can get done in five minutes or two minutes, and then if I still feel like doing it, I keep doing it.

And if I don't, then I'll move on to something else and come back to it.

But yeah, that's definitely helpful for me.

I think the mindset that this is going to be over in 24 hours, this is going to be over in a week, in one week, I'll be so happy and free, that keeps me going.

So what I would do is do objectives in the week rather than a schedule, because schedules stress me out.

I will, in the past, be like, I'll get up 9 a.m., never happens.

So every Friday, I'm a little social butterfly.

So I know by next week Friday, I want to go to this party or I want to go to this event.

And what objectives should I complete by then?

And so, let's say I have four courses, I need to complete one chapter per course, I need to complete homework for two courses, whatever.

So I know what I have to get done for the week, but there's no set day or set time, it's just like whenever I think I'm in the mood to do it.

So like, I know every day I have to get something done, but it's what mood am I in on this checklist?

Yeah, I think that sounds really good, because definitely from experience, schedules can be restricting.

And it's like, when you get put, let's say you don't wake up at 9 a.m. or you don't go to the gym at 9 a.m., then you're just like, oh, well, everything else that was supposed to follow it has been messed up now.

And you feel like you don't have the motivation to get anything done anymore, or at least that was the case for me.

So I definitely agree that objectives are the way to go.

The way you planned it around meeting friends and going out is definitely something good, because that's taking care of your well-being as well, being around friends and family and not just being in front of your books or a screen all day.

Yeah, I was going to say, I really admire how you manage your work-life balance, because if you don't have the balance, you're not going to be able to work.

If you're exhausting yourself with work, you're not going to want to do it anymore.

During exams in the year before you came to university, how did you manage your well-being?

Not my well-being, not my studying, not my time.

But if I could go back and advise myself, I'd probably say start earlier.

Because I was trying to scramble to do six subjects in two weeks.  But yeah, I would definitely say start earlier as well.

I try to be as prepared as possible, because the more prepared I was, the less anxious I was.

So I definitely prepared a lot and I tried to plan as many responses as I could to questions, like practice questions.

Because then I just felt like if I saw the paper, I'd be more confident that I've done something like this before, I can do it again.

Another thing I did was I allowed myself to have mental breaks.

And by mental breaks, I just mean moments of silence.

I literally just wanted to have no thoughts.

And this would be maybe when I'm eating, or if not when I'm eating, then when I'm waiting for the bus.

Because the way I move during exam seasons is I'm constantly multitasking.

And just having a break and not thinking about anything was pretty helpful as well.

So I had this little pad that I would take around in my backpack or my purse or whatever.

And anytime I felt anxiety, I would write about the anxiety.

There was a point I was writing 20 times a day in that anxiety pad because I had so much anxiety.

And so in my early 20s, I just became very mental health-focused.

Because I did my undergrad in psychology.

So by default, I was already in the environment to be mental health-focused.

So besides the anxiety pad, every evening I took time to just do breath.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Wellbeing during exam period | Ep 2: Manchester Voices podcast

anxiety

potential

mental

depression