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How do you keep calm and collected?

I finished my CHE317 test about 5 minutes ago and I'm now wasting time in the computer lab since the next bus will only come in half an hour.

It's been long since I freaked out on tests. Basically, on the first 40 minutes, my mind went blank and I couldn't even get pass rewriting the problem statements. Negative thoughts started to flood my head; something along the line of flunking it or flushing my grade down to the toilet after all the hard work for a semester. Then, I started to get tensed up, flipping frantically to see if there's any easier question that I could do first. And got more nervous realising I don't have a sure answer for any of them.

I looked at the clock on my left, silently cursing at how fast time elapsed. I felt like my brain was working hard, but somehow it couldn't process anything. It's like all the parts are working separately and there were too much unrelated stuff rushing in, that all it could spit out was incoherent thoughts. My hands wanted to work faster to beat the time, but my mind was too slow, thus, in my nervousness I started to punch the wrong buttons on my calculator.

With whatever knowledge left in my brain I tried to write anything that at least made a little sense. The clock continued to tick mercilessly and I could feel my heart beating fast. I was saying to myself "Can you, like, beat normally please?" (See, this is what I mean by unrelated stuff).

Have you ever experienced that? Your mind just hanging up on you?

It usually happens to me when I'm doing presentations or arguing in English. My arguments would become so shallow as I panickly searching for words or any sentences that are at least grammatically correct. And that is far more scary, because you'd have lots of people staring at you, thanking God that they're not in your shoes. Then, when you're back at your seat and your sensical mind gradually comes back, all the things that you wish you had said earlier would start rushing in. Irritating, isn't it?

So, how do you keep your mind calm and collected?

What I did tonight was I breathed slowly, inhaling oxygen and hopefully exhaling the stress. Then, I cleared my mind of everything and started fresh without thinking bout how much time I have left. I was still not calm til the end but really the breathing helped (udah kaya ibu hamil aja). And a tip to reduce nervousness during presentations: imagine your audience naked. I never try it but I think it'd work.