Next week, our 1Ls at McGeorge will be taking their first midterm exams of law school. Many are experiencing anxiety and stress, and it breaks my heart to witness brilliant students doubting their capabilities. Of course, I (we all?) need to do better to help students see their own greatness and understand that productive struggle is part of the process. Today, however, I am focusing on the things we can suggest our students do to manage their exam-day stress. Here are five suggestions:

(1) Self Care. Encourage your students to take care of themselves in the days and nights before their exams, attending to what they eat, getting up and move around on a regular basis, and sleeping roughly eight hours every night. The self care honors the students’ worthiness as people and plays a role in helping them tackle the difficult memory and analytical tasks they must handle on their exams while also giving them the emotional resources to manage their experiences.

(2) Meditation or Prayer. Encourage your students to consciously set aside time, even five minutes, for meditation or prayer depending on each student’s preference. Prayer and meditation improve mood, reduce stress and anxiety, and lower blood pressure.

(3) Systematic Relaxation and Box Breathing. Systematic relaxation and box breathing are really just forms of meditation. Systematic relaxation involves tensing and relaxing each muscle area from the toes all the way up the body to the neck and face and then back down again. Box breathing, at least as I learned it and practice it, involves breathing in as I draw the first side of a box in the air with a finger, breathing in more as I draw the second side and then holding it, starting to release the air as I draw the third side, and letting out the remaining air as I draw the fourth side.

(4) Positive Self Talk. This technique involves consciously choosing to replace negative, self-critical, self-judging feelings with thinking positively, i.e., “I got this. I feel great about how hard I prepared for this exam.” “I am smart and capable, and I can’t wait to demonstrate it on this exam.”

(5) Expressive Writing. Studies have found that students who write about their pre-exam fears and anxieties right before an exam about which they are worrying boost their scores. Perhaps, they boost their scores because releasing those fears and anxieties frees up working memory, or, perhaps, they boost their scores because their writing. frees up their minds to focus on the exam and not their worries. Regardless, it works.