How are you actually supposed to feel after exams?

[Coolgalbornin03Lo]

I feel like all of them so far have gone horribly average especially English- I’ve totally given up on 40+ study scores lol. Do people who perform extremely well feel Superior and like gods when they leave an exam? Remember getting every single question correct unlike me who is still wondering what the hell that all was. 3 exams in 3 days and it’s like the whole year really boiled down to an average performance- it’s so strange I felt nothing then and I feel nothing now. I fear I’ll continue to feel detached long after my last exam. Maybe it’s to avoid the pain of *just* missing out on success. I’m trying to prep myself for a 36-37 in English/psych/bio but I’m so delusion I’ll still be crushed.

[Chocolatemilkshake]

I feel like all of them so far have gone horribly average especially English- I’ve totally given up on 40+ study scores lol. Do people who perform extremely well feel Superior and like gods when they leave an exam? Remember getting every single question correct unlike me who is still wondering what the hell that all was. 3 exams in 3 days and it’s like the whole year really boiled down to an average performance- it’s so strange I felt nothing then and I feel nothing now. I fear I’ll continue to feel detached long after my last exam. Maybe it’s to avoid the pain of *just* missing out on success. I’m trying to prep myself for a 36-37 in English/psych/bio but I’m so delusion I’ll still be crushed.

Hi Elle,
I think it's totally normal to feel like you didn't do your best or that you "should have" done better on the exam. Sometimes it can seem like we put so many hours of preparation into a subject and then, when we walk out of an exam it seems like all of it was for nothing. Especially since the exam is only 2/3 hours and a lot of the time we remember all the questions we got wrong rather than the ones we got right. If it makes you feel better, myself and a lot of other people feel this way! I walked out my english exam like this too, feeling that I simply wasn't "good enough" to get in the 40s.

I always like to think, imagine if I hadn't put in the work? Not only would I have been disappointed in myself but also, I would have done a lot worse on the exam. So it might seem like your work is going to waste but generally hard work is never a waste, even if it may not seem like it on the day of your exam or even in your results.

The truth is, whilst you're allowed to be disappointed the best thing you can do is focus on your next exams rather than worrying about what you can't change (sorry for the cliché advice).  Usually with time, the disappointment starts to fade and relief will kick in so that you can celebrate with everyone else. Plus, results don't come out for another ~40 days. I'm quite a practical person (I know that sometimes emotions get the better of us), but I'd say you're better off trying to forget about exam results and enjoy a well-deserved break (after your last exam that is). Then you can just focus on your results on results day and deal with the disappointment/happiness then, rather than attempting to predict/prepare yourself for "bad" study scores. Remember that attempting to estimate your performance, especially on the english exam, is relatively difficult. You could have gone a lot better than you thought. 

I think feeling "detached" from your exams in normal and actually quite good, what's the point in obsessing over something already finished? Go celebrate, at the end of the day whatever happens you studied throughout the year, put in 100% and sat all your VCE exams and that's something to be proud of.

EDIT: typo