Test anxiety

Tips for managing stress during midterm season

“None of what happened at the MAC could have happened without the championing and hands-on convincing that Rick took deep care to do. The art world took him seriously, and he took artists seriously,” said Victoria Corcoran, the MAC’s first curator.

In 1998 Brettell joined the faculty of UTD. For 16 years, he taught courses on Aesthetic Studies, until stepping into the role of director for the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History in 2014.

Bonnie Pitman, director of the DMA from 2008 to 2011, said in an essay dedicated to Brettell, “Rick was deeply committed to creating a place on the UTD campus for the presentation and study of the arts.”

At the SP/N exhibit, works by canon artists such as Camille Pissarro and Edouard Vuillard comingle with a work by Jean Lacy featuring Brettell’s glasses in a cigar box, recalling the memory of their late owner.

“When I went into [Brettell’s] house, I was greeted by an eclectic collection,” Metz said. “Every work had a story, and I realized that he collected artists more so than art. Curating this show, I selected work by artists he had inspired, provided opportunities for and even just hung out with.”

Brettell’s memory lives on in his work with the Edith O’Donnell Institute of

Art History, the planned Athenaeum Museum and memories of friends and family. The exhibition catalog collects writings from local artists, gallery owners, associated scholars, Brettell’s family and more – all dedicated to capturing Brettell’s ineffable spirit. In her writing, Brettell’s wife, Caroline B. Brettell, said, “[H]e found beauty in so many things, wanted to have them around him, and arranged them artfully so that they spoke to each other. He was forever the curator and the collector.”

A video of Brettell playing his Steinway grand piano echoes throughout SP/N from its display in the front gallery. The posthumous memory of Brettell fills the gallery as his hands glide across the keys.

“My hope is that Dallas and UTD remember him and his visions,” said Brettell’s long-time assistant, Pierrette, “and will carry on with the same spirit in the future.”

After a long, hard week of studying, you take a deep breath and print your name on your exam booklet, eyes skimming over the first question. But as you try to make sense of the words, your heart sinks, your stomach churns and your mind suddenly goes blank. If this experience sounds familiar, you’ve likely been a victim of test anxiety – a nearly universal experience for college students. Apart from the obnoxious physical symptoms and the inability to think clearly, test anxiety can drastically impact your performance and quality of life — even outside the classroom — if you don’t know how to manage it well. To take control of your exams and not let them control you, first consider the nature of your fears and approach them with a change in thinking.

Students normally fear exams for either one of two reasons. First, they worry they are not ready and are bound to fail due to their unpreparedness. This fear is valid, but it can be confronted by reducing expectations for perfection and making your study time feel as comfortable as possible.

“I advise students to sit down and have a friend that you usually enjoy relaxing with say, ‘We're going to chat about every 15 minutes. We're going to just flip through our notes, just flip through and just read, and then we're going to chat,’” said Student Counseling Center psychologist Beverly Wil- liams. “And so what you're doing is trying to integrate something that feels really nice and supportive with something that you tend to feel very upset by.”

The second fear is more unfounded and pertains to missing out on future career opportunities because of a bad grade. Yes, exams are important, but one test in a college class cannot significantly alter the course of your entire future. From doctors and lawyers to engineers and businesspeople, it would be hard to come by a successful professional who has not performed poorly on or failed a test at some point.

“I cannot tell you how many people have gotten from point A to point B when their perfect plan didn't work – because not all the time do perfect plans work,” Williams said. “So helping [students] just to get their own balance and speak to themselves in a rational, comforting way and then just remember, ‘okay, I'm going to do my best. I'm going to do everything it takes to do my best and be more relaxed.’”

Furthermore, exams are not even all that effective at predicting career success, which is presumably what most college students are ultimately after. Remind yourself that regardless of your performance on a test, you won’t gain or lose a significant job opportunity due to a single grade.

Taking tests is essentially like playing games, with your goal being to collect as

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