After speaking with hundreds of PA students and PA-Cs who have failed their exams, there is one thing that causes more failures than anything else. Fear.
Bodhi was right when he said, “Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true.” (Point Break)
Being nervous, anxious, and overwhelmed on test day will cause your worst fears to come true. Even if you know everything, you need to be In The Zone, in Flow, to make the kinds of connections you need to pass the exam. You need your entire brain working overtime and cranking through the material.
If you’re pensive and tentative and nervous, it is so much harder.
I’ve got some great ways to fight fear and anxiety. I’m not going to claim that I invented any of them, but I’ve worked with them, and they’ve helped me and hundreds of other PAs.
Here’s one exercise that will take about 10 minutes:
Grab a piece of paper. At the top, write out worst-case scenario in big, bold letters.
Then, start writing about the thing that terrifies you, and, here’s the important part, what happens next and make it ridiculous. As far-fetched and terrifying as you can.
Here’s how mine might look for next year.
– I fail my exam
– I have to tell my wife who laughs at me.
– I have to tell my boss who broadcasts it over the PA system at the hospital before firing me.
– I go home and tell my wife I was fired, and she takes the kids and leaves me.
– The PAER community finds out I failed my exam, and the entire community dries up and blows away.
– My family is gone, I’ve lost my job, I’ve lost PAER, and I don’t know where to begin to study.
– I get a job at the local gas station and live out my days in overalls and a long white beard talking about the good old days.
Put them all down on paper. Your worst fears. Seriously.
Don’t edit it. Don’t think too deeply about it. But get it down on paper.
You have to name your fears. You beat them by dragging them out into the light.
Jedi Master Yoda, “Named must your fear be before banish it you can.”
Confucius, “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.”
Once you have your fears down on paper, you can begin addressing the reality of the situation.
If I fail, I will feel stupid. I’ll feel really dumb telling people. I’ll be worried because I will have done my best and I won’t be sure what to do next to prepare.
My wife will feel bad and try her best to help me.
My employer won’t care as long as I eventually pass the stupid thing.
As far as the PAER community goes, I could probably chronicle my failure and what I did next as an education piece for them that they would appreciate. It would also help them see that it isn’t a horrible stigma to fail and that anything is possible one way or the other.
In the end, it would be a frustrating three months studying again, but it probably wouldn’t impact my life much.
Then, a cleansing breeze comes through the window, and you feel so much better.
You can banish that fear that cycles in your brain by bringing it out into the open. By confronting it.
One of my favorite quotes is by Mark Twain: “I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”
We all torture ourselves. You can get better at it, but you have to do the work. You have to actually get that piece of paper out and write out the exercise above. Do it, or those thoughts will keep spiraling around in your head.
This exercise is just the tip of the iceberg. I put together a short book No More Test Anxiety and gave a presentation on this topic to a PA class – both have a lot more ideas for winning the battle against fear and anxiety. If you can keep these emotions under control, I’m pretty sure you’ve got the content knowledge part.
You can only get that No More Test Anxiety Package through PA Week Package which is available until midnight, and you can get it at a ridiculously low price.
https://www.physicianassistantexamreview.com/pawee…
Brian Wallace