OCTOBER 14 — You could argue that whatever survives a catastrophe will prove its special character. 

The Covid-19 pandemic may have wreaked havoc on certain industries and forced a rethinking of how we live our lives but a few things endured: xenophobia, poor reasoning and over-eating. 

You know what else persists? Exam stress. Not only will the psychological pressure from school assessments last, it’ll probably rise.

Many years ago I was invited to a school to give a talk about stress management to about a hundred SPM students. As is usually the case, the teacher in charge introduced me prior to my talk. 

What shocked me was what she said to the students as part of her preamble. Below is the gist of it:

"All of you need to learn how to manage stress because if you don’t do well in your SPM, you are going to suffer. One of my friends’ sons got only 2As for his SPM and he couldn’t get into a good college after that. Now he’s locked himself into a room; please understand how important the SPM is. If you don’t do well, life will become very difficult for you!”

I was like WTF. Are they facing an exam or a firing squad?

My plan there was to say that they — the students — can manage their stress better by :