Last minute preparation!

What to do in the last week or two before the exam! Speaker 1 (00:00) Hi everyone. This is Natalie and this is your Casc podcast. So this little bonus episode today is about that last sort of week before the exam, maybe two weeks before the exam. I'm saying a week because as I'm recording this right now, it is a week before one of the September exams. And so I know a lot of you are there in panic mode with your final preparations and I just wanted to do a little reassuring post about this last week and give a few tips about how to really get your mindset ready for the exam. Speaker 1 (00:46) So you guys have been preparing now for a few months, okay? Hopefully you've listened to all of my podcasts, read my articles about the exam, seen my videos, so you'll be well prepared, okay? The way that I approach this exam, as I said right at the beginning, is about having a technique for it, okay? It's not about learning every single station. So if you're there thinking, I haven't looked at every possible station, I'm going to fail. Speaker 1 (01:15) That's not true, okay? You don't need to have seen every or practiced even every station, okay? You just need to have the skills that you can use and reuse in the stations, okay? So by listening to my podcast and picking up these tips, you are learning skills that will help you for any station. It doesn't matter what it is. Speaker 1 (01:43) And of course, they are trying to put more new stations in at each exam sitting now. So I bet there will be new stations, maybe two or three new stations per sitting from now on. So it's really, really important that you keep that in mind, that you know what to do. You've got an approach for the exam and it doesn't matter so much about practicing individual stations, okay? So with that being said, I think in the week before the exam, you don't need to go crazy, okay? Speaker 1 (02:23) The last thing you want to do is burnout before the exam. You don't want to be doing so, so much practice that you get to the day and you're just absolutely exhausted and then end up giving a kind of worse performance on the day because you kind of gave it your best a week or two weeks before the actual exam, you want to peak for the exam. So don't kind of go on overdrive in the next few days, okay? If anything, actually bring it back and relax a little bit. I'm a big believer in this idea of letting things settle in your mind. Speaker 1 (03:00) So letting your brain process what you've been doing over the last few weeks and actually going in feeling more calm and having looked after yourself. The last thing you want is that you haven't slept in the last week and you turn up to the exam and you're sleep deprived and stressed and burnt out. That's not what you want, okay? So look after yourself. Sleep enough make sure you're eating enough and turn up to your exam well rested and healthy. Speaker 1 (03:34) Because that's when you're going to be working or functioning your best. Okay? So what I would suggest doing in the lead up to the exam is think about how you're actually going to manage in the exam itself, okay? So what coping skills do you have to help you through? How are you going to deal with the anxiety? Speaker 1 (03:54) How are you going to manage, for example, the long break that's in between the morning and the afternoon sessions? Do you want to speak to people? Do you not want to speak to people? Might be worth bringing, like, headphones. You can sit and just listen to music and not talk to anyone. Speaker 1 (04:11) You might as I did want to get some fresh air, so I actually went to the local shopping center, and I ended up trying on coats in a random shop in the break because it was just something to distract my brain, to take my mind Speaker 1 (04:24) off of it. Physically, I was doing something. My body was busy doing something. So my mind also didn't kind of linger on the exam too long, and that really helped me, actually. Speaker 1 (04:41) You also want to think about how you're going to manage your anxiety during the exam. So thinking about between those stations, what are you going to do, how are you going to shake off the station that's been there before? So I use some breathing techniques. You might want to try some of those so that you've got something to do. Maybe you've got some kind of mantra or something you like saying to yourself that helps you to calm down. Speaker 1 (05:11) I think what's really important in this exam is confidence. So you want to get to a place where you feel confident in yourself. And I know that every one of you can do it. Okay? So in your mind, I want you to be thinking, I can pass this exam. Speaker 1 (05:27) I'm going to pass this exam, okay? And you need to walk into your stations like you're going to pass it, okay? Believing in yourself and having that confidence because you do know what you're saying. You know what you're talking about. You may have never seen this station before in your life, but you have key skills that you can use to actually pass the station, even if you haven't seen it before. Speaker 1 (05:51) Remember that. Remind yourself of it and be confident. Remember that each examiner doesn't know how well you've done on previous stations. So for all they know, you've done amazing. You've smashed every single one excellent passes all around, and you're about to do the same in this station. Speaker 1 (06:07) And that's how you want to walk in. Okay? And that's how you want to portray yourself. Okay? Now, I know that obviously there are four days of the exam, and if you're not on the first day, you might hear from others what comes up in the exam. Speaker 1 (06:25) And in some ways some people might find that helpful. Personally, I wouldn't have found that helpful, but I was on the first day anyway. But they do change the stations each day. And also I feel that if there's say, for example, a new station station or something you don't know you haven't heard about Speaker 1 (06:43) or something before, you can end up freaking out a little bit. I don't know how to discuss that. Speaker 1 (06:48) I don't know how to do that. And so you then start panicking and thinking that you need to read up everything about said topic and that's probably a waste of your time because it's probably not going to come up in your exam anyway. And actually, if you know what the actual task is in the exam, it's often actually less scary than hearing the topic. So like for example, this gestational diabetes with quetiapine station that came up recently, people really freaked out, like, oh my goodness, I don't know anything about gestational diabetes and Quetiapine. But actually if you approach this like a Speaker 1 (07:33) pregnancy medication advice station, you will do absolutely fine. Speaker 1 (07:38) You need to ask to find out what missing, information you need and then talk through their options. And generally the options for medication are they stay on that medication, they stop that medication, or they change that medication to a different one. Do you see what I mean? Now if you think about it like that, actually, you could probably get through that managed absolutely fine, even if you don't know 100