Rosie - I. MISSED. YOU.

I’m back with lots of ideas and all the naïve enthusiasm that my plan to be consistent might work this time!

First: apologies. This time the absence was only partly my fault – I wrote some pieces back in March but the timings didn’t work out. April and May were my bad. Or were they?

I don’t like being confronted with my neurodiversity as it normally means someone is trying to stop me from doing something. I self-stigmatise and internalise the psychiatric and political diagnoses of my struggles as symptoms of serious Snowflake Syndrome. But as my favourite childhood book says ‘you can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, you can’t go round it’ no you have to go through it, embrace the neurodiversity with a big old bear hug and bear-knuckle fight for dignity.

Thanks for ‘bearing’ with me and we are almost out of the woods and at the picnic as far as the bear puns are concerned. Now let’s bear down (I’m done) on the actual reason for this post – the grizzly (sorry) topic of exams.

You’re probably thinking I’m too late but hear me out. I want to talk about what you do after exams.

As exams-neurodiversity is too big a topic to pack into a pithy post, I am working on a whole bunch of tips and reflections for different types of exams (coursework, formal exams etc.), different exam transitions (GSCEs, A-Levels, uni searching etc.) and different people involved (students, teachers, supporters – carers, parents, siblings, guardians etc.) so let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like to hear my thoughts on.

However, I want to spotlight some general thoughts on the specific challenges ‘post-exams’ can create for neurodivergent individuals. I really struggled with the transition and, because it doesn’t get talked about, I felt like a complete freak for finding it so hard.

Exams test you. Not just academically and not just individually. It took a whole squad of supporters to get me to the exams and to then to help me deal with the practical fallout afterwards. A political commitment to an exclusionary vision of meritocracy as well as a fear of the costs of actually making exams accessible means exam season tests neurodivergent students and their supporters mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. Unfortunately (although I can’t be sure) I don’t think the prospective Secretaries of State for Education read this blog so for now, much like a bear hunt, we have to go through it.

My exam stress started before the curriculum finished. My brain took the warnings of the life-determining nature of GCSEs and A-Levels literally and I catastrophised. When the school timetable was replaced with the impenetrable instruction to ‘revise’, my routine was ripped away and my ASD drive for completeness created an impossible list of vital tasks. My ADHD made trying to follow guidance to address topics in turn as opposed to switching between them unproductive. Overwhelmed with a fear of failure I filled my every second with revision and was so tightly wound that I lost the ability to manage life admin, medical needs and to communicate beyond screaming fits at the slightest disruption to my new routine. Somehow, I battled through the burnout and sensory overwhelm of the exam hall to the finish line. After my last exam, I walked home in silence, climbed into my mum’s bed still wearing my sweat soaked clothes and school shoes and slept.

Supporters and mental health services assumed the end of exams would relieve the stress but routines are sticky. Revision had become my whole life, the focus of all my anxieties and without them I felt identity-less and lost. I didn’t know how to stand, breath or think apart from about exams.

I looked to others. I felt too much of a failure to celebrate and I didn’t even know how what ‘relax’ meant in practical terms – it’s really not as self-explanatory as people make out. Fuelled by a need to be productive and a chronic boredom, I latched on to the other post-exam narrative - ‘do not waste this opportunity – prepare for your future.’

I hadn’t had the mental space to think about this during exams and I felt like an idiot when I realised how far behind I was relative to my peers embarking on pre-arranged work experience. My exam failure fear latched on to this new target and the relaxation agenda was swiftly replaced with a future planning crisis. I aimlessly searched courses and looked for work I knew I was too unwell and socially anxious to actually do. I felt hopeless and so I stopped entirely. I hibernated on the sofa, stewing in my stress and boredom, deferring decisions in the hope the accumulated crises would sort themselves out and waited to be able to resume ‘student mode’.

The point in my oversharing is to highlight that for a neurodivergent individual, the test doesn’t always end with the final ‘pens down’.

I do not have the answers – resetting the routine and de-stressing is personal and each post-exam period has its own unique challenges which I hope to write more about but I do want to share some general thoughts that might help in strategising around the specific challenges that may be ahead.

1. Understand

Considering the whole range of stresses is crucial.

My mental stress meant I wasn’t able to plan for the abrupt end to my revision routine or think about planning for the future. Recognising this helped those around me to support me to make a new timetable and breakdown the big future questions.

Understanding the emotional toll and my guilt helped us to think about what kind of ‘nice’ activities felt possible for me – for example I tried a creative writing course as then it still felt ‘productive’.

Similarly, understanding my physical exhaustion might have helped teachers qualify their expectations of summer work.

Socially understanding how scary reaching out to people felt after my exam isolation meant I wasn’t forced into extroverted celebrations.

Practically, it was important to recognise the extent revision structured my day. At first a needed a minute-by-minute breakdown of how to function – e.g. not just have breakfast but have breakfast at 8:30am for 25 minutes in the lounge whilst watching x TV show.

2. Negotiate

I had to understand that exams had also been stressful for my support network. For example, the thought of a family gathering was terrifying when I felt like I had forgotten how to communicate but it was important for my family and to prevent me from hibernating in my depression. We worked together to minimise the stress by giving me specific information about the timing and activities I needed to prepare for.

3. Sequence

I was so anxious about the future, I wanted to keep running but my brain and body were exhausted and I had to rest. Trying to follow a vague instruction like ‘research university courses’ whilst stressed just resulted in me searching through the entire directory of undergraduate courses offered in the UK and making careful notes on degrees I knew I would never take – just in case. Taking a step back and getting clarification would have saved a lot of time and energy.

4. Stage

Going straight from intense revision mode to nothing was never going to work for me and I wasn’t able to park the future-planning anxiety until I had had a break. Instead of cold-turkey we scaled down the ‘productive’ tasks and scaled up the ‘nice’ tasks. We broke down the future tasks and did simpler tasks until I had built up my resilience to stress. This let me relax my initial timetable, making little steps helped quieten the future-stress demon and having active ‘nice’ tasks was tolerable to my busy brain.

5. Iterate

Plan but don’t plan. We quickly realised that having a set list of tasks or courses to completed created its own fear of failure and the rigidity of the routine meant that I frequently ended up doing things I didn’t like because they were in the plan. There were a lot of editions of my summer routine!

6. Recognise the strain

I was incredibly frustrated and harsh on myself when I compared my struggles to my peers who appeared to just be enjoying their summer and I felt hopeless at my lack of progress on future planning. It took a lot of support to help me understand why I was finding it harder.

7. Accept

When you are trying to understand the challenge, negotiate conflict, plan and iterate as well as manage the frustration and upset along the way, you also need to try and accept the situation. I’d be lying to say that I succeeded in this. Post-exams for me was filled with tantrums, tears and negative self-talk, but I did take the step to be honest and to keep fighting against the guilt and anxiety.

I resisted rest. I constantly cast the transition stresses as failures which ultimately made the anxiety higher and stopped me from recovering the mental, emotional, physical and social stamina I needed to be able to start tackling the challenges.

Acceptance didn’t make them easier to solve but it did make the process less destructive for everyone involved.

Much solidarity,
Rosie xxx