Celebrating Examination with Stress Management

On 24th December, 2014, our School organized a 'Stress Management Workshop' for the students of classes 11 and 12 alongwith other schools, parents and teachers. The workshop was a collaboration of HT Education with Expressions India, the National Life Skills, Values Education and School Wellness Programme. The facilitator of the counselling session was Dr. Jitendra Nagpal, Programme Director of Expressions India and Senior Consultant Psychiatrist and Advisor at Moolchand Medcity, New Delhi.

Dr. Nagpal explained that the whole idea of examinations was for us to 'celebrate the exam season,' and not to fear it! Unfortunately, the exam season brings with it sleepless nights, loss of appetites and of course, excessive and unneeded stress. He emphasised that, while some amount of motivational stress is needed for us to do well, undue and excessive stress lead us to err rather than succeed. He said we should treat the board exams like an obstacle in life, just another part of it, and not one that necessarily defines how we end up doing in life.

This was followed by a question-answer session where many students confessed that their parents did not agree with their choices of career. Here, Dr Nagpal pointed out that aptitude and interest must travel hand in hand to decide one's career, and if one is passionate about what one wants to pursue, then one must go ahead with it. At the end of the day, job satisfaction matters more than the amount of money it brings in. Dr. Nagpal then told us how each one of us has a unique biological clock which facilitates our learning faculties to function effectively if maintained properly. This was followed by the screening of a couple of short films for analysis by the students in the audience on the same theme.

In the last phase of the session we were given tips by subject experts from HTs StudyMate Learning Centre.The experts were Sharad Agarwal, Savita Sharma, Dr. Alok Bariyar, Manju Arora, R .Gurucharan and Brajesh Trivedi. We got the opportunity for a one-to-one interaction with these subject experts, to enable us to clear our doubts.