Best Way to overcome "time" anxiety

I've been studying for the HVAC test and I think at this point, I understand the materials. However,  when i am doing problems, and I time myself,

i start to freak out. I tend to not read thru the questions thoroughly, which lead to careless mistakes. Like reading the wrong value on the Psyhc Chart.

Am always checking the time to see how many minutes I have. Any ideas how to overcome this anxiety? 

Thank you.

When you get to a question ifyou dont immediately know how to solve it skip and move to the next one and then go back once you have completed all questions you Can answer - you will be supposed how much
Time you end up with doing this...

GR8 PLUMENG said:

I've been studying for the HVAC test and I think at this point, I understand the materials. However,  when i am doing problems, and I time myself,

i start to freak out. I tend to not read thru the questions thoroughly, which lead to careless mistakes. Like reading the wrong value on the Psyhc Chart.

Am always checking the time to see how many minutes I have. Any ideas how to overcome this anxiety? 

Thank you.

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The best advice I can give you is to build up your confidence. From experience, that only comes when:

1) You feel familiar with the material for your test discipline. Practice, practice and then practice problems some more. First do them without the time pressure, understand what is being asked and READ the question well so you don't do unecessary work. Then, go back and do it against the clock, get a good sense of what the 6-min. allowance/problem "feels" like WITHOUT the pressure of looking at the clock.

2) Organize your references well, tab everything in a way that makes it easy for you to find the information under pressure. Do NOT bring more references than necessary to the exam and certainly don't use references you're not familiar with by this time (3 weeks left).

3) I don't know how many HVAC practice tests are out there, but at least for my discipline (MDM) I found 4. I highly recommend that you look for as many practice problems as you can so you can put your readiness to the test (no pun intended ). Sometimes you KNOW the problem, but how they word things can throw you off. You need to become familiar with the different ways a problem can be stated and again, that only comes with practice.

4) If you find that you run out of time and simply do not understand what a certain question is asking you, the answer is "C". The person who runs the review course I subscribed to did a statistical analysis on the last 2 NCEES practice exams and for some reason, C got the highest percentage. Something to think about IF you just have no idea what's going on and can't take an educated guess.

Good luck to us in April ....stay positive and PRACTICE. You still have plenty of time.

Regards,

JV

jvanoye said:

If you find that you run out of time and simply do not understand what a certain question is asking you, the answer is "C". The person who runs the review course I subscribed to did a statistical analysis on the last 2 NCEES practice exams and for some reason, C got the highest percentage.

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An alternate theory (not necessarily better, just different) is that the A,B,C,D counts are all equal, so as not to give statistical advantage to picking at random. For the PE this means each letter appears 10 times. If this is true... you may gain a statistical advantage by compiling a count of your confidently answered questions and seeing which letter is least represented. Obviously this would be your last resort, right at the end, for questions that you have no idea on. 

FFT

My advice is to just slow down.  Like the adage from the world of self defense: slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Slow down, be thorough.  If you don't immediately know the solution PROCESS, mark it and come back.