Mental Health Tips for Pakistani Students During Board Exams (By Huzi)
There is a version of you that your family describes at every mehndi: beta, the future engineer. That version never sleeps, never has a bad paper, and never existed. You do. And during board-exam season, the gap between the poster child and the real student gets heavy enough that it deserves better advice than "bas parh lo". This is that advice.
Say it out loud, once, properly
Stress that stays inside grows teeth. Find the one person who listens without a lecture — a friend, an elder sister, a parent on a good day — and say the true sentence: mujhe darr lag raha hai. It takes ten seconds. You will hear yourself describe the fear, and it will shrink to the size of an actual problem instead of a weather system. If it feels heavier than that, the Pakistan Mental Health Coalition keeps a list of affordable therapists, and a school counsellor is bound by confidentiality more often than students believe.
Renegotiate with the family, gently
Parents here are usually frightened, not cruel — the future they are managing for you is often the one they could not secure for themselves. So instead of the usual fight, try the trade: show them the study plan on paper, hours marked, chapters listed. A visible plan quiets the anxiety in a room better than any argument can. And when the comparison cousin arrives — the one who topped in Lahore — let him be somebody else's weather.
Study like a human, not a machine
The brain takes short runs, not marathons. Two focused hours with a fifteen-minute break beats a glazed eight at the desk, and small finishable goals — two chapters before lunch — work because finishing is the fuel. Apps like Forest keep the phone locked while a little tree grows, which sounds childish until you notice you just read three pages without checking anything. Sleep is the other half of studying; the filing happens overnight. The Instagram topper claiming ten-hour days is posting the highlight reel of a highlight reel.
Protect the engine
Walk in the evening, even twenty minutes — motion is the cheapest mood-lifter there is. Eat actual food at actual times, because the exam-season diet of chai and energy drinks produces exactly the crash you are then medicating with more chai. And breathe before you open the book, not only during meltdowns: two slow minutes of steady breathing lowers the shoulders and the stakes together.
The one thing to keep
Marks measure one performance on one set of days — not intelligence, not kindness, not what you will become. People you admire have flopped papers, re-sat them, and never mention it now, because life asked them bigger questions than the board ever did. Protect your peace like it is the syllabus, because it is.
When the syllabus feels unbearable, I remember the classrooms of Gaza — tents, chalk, children still learning through everything. Their persistence quietly reframes my overwhelm every time, and it deserves better than a forgetful world.
Exam season is also when our student counter does its best trade: the boys who saved pocket money all year for Murree, and the groups we send on their first Umrah the summer after results day. HTG Travels keeps a student shelf at our office in Sialkot — modest budgets, honest itineraries, and no early-morning buses unless you specifically ask for one.
