Sweaty palms before a test don’t mean you’re unprepared. They mean your body showed up early.

The physical symptoms of nerves are your body getting ready. More blood moving, more alertness, systems brought online ahead of something that matters. That is preparation rather than malfunction. The mistake is reading the sensation as a report on how much you studied, when it has no access to that information at all and only knows something important is about to start.

Rename the feeling next time it turns up in a corridor before an exam. Not nerves, just equipment switching on. Then go in and begin with a question you can definitely answer, which gives the body something to do with all that readiness.