What To Do The Night Before a Test
via canva.com and @jacoblund
“Twas’ the night before finals, and all through the house....”
Don’t worry, we’re not writing a parody poem about finals season. We care about you too much to put you through that! However, before all those fun December holidays, unfortunately, many students will be challenged with tackling the dreaded week of finals. Not only do the vast majority of high schools and colleges have final exams in the weeks leading up to the holidays, but there are also SAT (Dec 7) and ACT (Dec 14) exams.
Hopefully, your child’s preparations for any of these exams began weeks ago, but regardless, the night before a stressful event can be heavily anxiety-producing. As the clock ticks and the test draws nearer, anxiety grows and can possibly greatly impact test performance. With all this in mind, what can you and your child do the night before a big exam to help manage those nerves and be as ready as possible for the test?
GET A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP
Sleep has been proven to quite possibly be the most important physical factor that affects test performance. Researchers in the UK recently tested over 600 first-year college students to try to discover just how impactful sleep can be on test performance. They found that students who slept more performed better on their exams. The real surprise was how much difference even one hour could make. Students who got seven hours of sleep the night before an exam saw their scores go up an average of 1.7 points (on a scale of 20) than those who got six hours. Those points could be the difference between a B and an A- on a final exam.
During sleep, our body and our brain cells recover and prepare for the next day. During the process of recharging, our brain cells actually work to consolidate the new information. In other words, while we sleep our brain is actually solidifying the information that we have taken in throughout the day and even throughout the week. This is why dreams are so often about what happened to us that day. So not only will getting a good night’s sleep help your child stay energized for the test, it can actually reinforce and support the studying that they have done.
SET AN ALARM
It’s very important to get a good night’s sleep before an exam, but those extra hours should come at night, not in the morning! All of the studying and preparation doesn’t matter much if your child sleeps through the test. Standardized tests often begin earlier than your child is used to waking up on a weekend. Set an alarm that gives your child ample time to get up, get dressed, and eat a healthy breakfast.
EAT HEALTHY
Speaking of breakfast, your child should eat a healthy and filling meal the morning before the test. This is usually something with protein like eggs or yogurt with fruit. Protein provides energy that remains throughout the day and not the short bursts that carbs and sugar are known for. Also, make sure your child doesn’t overeat because that can cause discomfort and tiredness halfway through the exam.
Besides breakfast, the meal the night before the test is equally as important. There are foods that positively (and negatively) impact brain function. As stated above, brain functions the night before a test is crucial in getting that restorative eight hours of sleep. Here are some foods that are excellent to make the night before an exam:
Fish
Fish is very high in Omega-3 protein, which the body uses to power itself.
Grilled Chicken
Chicken is another protein-rich food and grilling avoids the fat and simple carbs that fried chicken piles on.
Fresh salad/vegetables
Fruit and vegetables are complex carbohydrates. They give the body energy, as opposed to simple carbohydrates (sugary foods, fried food) that require energy to break down.
DON’T OVERSTUDY
The instinct to pull an all-nighter and cram the night before a test makes a lot of sense and has been reinforced by decades of media. Additionally, it would seem to make sense that if sleep helps reinforce the information in the brain, studying right before bed would give the brain more information to reinforce. However, as we’ve learned, this has been proven to actually be highly detrimental to the test. Having your brain highly activated right before bed does not lead to the restorative sleep needed for the night before an exam.
There are other biological reasons why cramming doesn’t work. When we try to absorb a lot of information in a short amount of time, our brains put that information into our “short term” memory storage. This is the part of the brain that remembers every day, unimportant details. This is not the part of the brain that has information reinforced through sleep. In order to put the necessary information into “long-term” storage, time is needed for the brain to process it. It’s important your child carves out solid study blocks in the weeks leading up to the test and leaves the final night as a time to rest up, relax, and get ready.
Sources:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sleep-hours-exam-performance_n_5516643
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-happens-in-the-brain-during-sleep1/
https://prepexpert.com/best-foods-to-eat-before-a-test/