How Learning Guitar Can Be a Mental Health Break During Exam Season

I get it. Exam season is rough. You're sitting there with your textbooks spread out everywhere, and your brain just feels fried.

Here's what most people don't realize about guitar playing during stressful times like exams: it actually changes your body chemistry. Not in some vague wellness way. In a measurable, scientifically proven way that shows up in blood tests.​

What Actually Happens in Your Body When You Play

1. When you pick up a guitar, your cortisol drops. Cortisol is the stress hormone. The one making you feel anxious and wired when you're cramming for tests.
   Studies on music and stress show that both listening to and playing music reduces cortisol levels in your bloodstream, even by significant amounts according to research.
2. Your brain also releases dopamine when you play. Dopamine is what makes stuff feel good. Scientists did PET scans on people listening to music they loved, and they could literally see dopamine flooding the reward centers of their brains.
   When you're learning guitar and you finally nail that chord change you've been working on? That's dopamine doing its thing.​

I started playing guitar during my teen years, and obviously played through college. During my sophomore year when I had three midterms in one week, you could say I felt fried. I loved guitar so I included guitar breaks, not knowingly or because I thought it would help. Thought I was just procrastinating...

But after 20 minutes of playing, I could actually focus again when I went back to studying.

Greenlight 😉

How To Use Guitar During Study Sessions

Here is what I can recommend and would do if I was going through exams again.

1. I'd keep my guitar on a stand right next to my desk. Not in a case. Not in another room. Right there where I can grab it.
2. When I would feel my brain starting to shut down, usually after 45 minutes of studying, play for 10-15 minutes. Sometimes work on a new song I'm learning. Sometimes just mess around with chords I already know. No pressure. No goals. Just playing.

The key is not turning it into another thing to stress about. You might want to think of it as a mental reset button, not another task on your to-do list.

There's much research on music education, proving it improves psychological well-being, which then improves academic performance. So taking that guitar break isn't slacking off. It's strategic.

Common Mistakes to Watch Out For

You don't want to overdo guitar during exams though. Here are some things I would recommend against.

• Thinking you need to practice "properly" - Not during exam season. This is about mental health breaks, not about becoming a virtuoso. I'd recommend just playing what feels good rather than following rigid practice schedules.
• Waiting until complete burnout - Some people wait until they're totally fried before taking any break at all. If you're overwhelmed with assignments and need help managing your workload, https://edubirdie.com/ or similar services can provide academic support while you focus on maintaining your mental health. It's good to push yourself, but everyboxy has their limits.
• Comparing yourself to other players - Watching some 16-year-old shred on YouTube and then feeling bad about your own playing kills the whole point. The benefit comes from playing, not from being the best. I'd suggest avoiding YouTube guitarists during exam season if they make you feel inadequate.

Why Guitar Works Better Than Just Sitting Around

A lot of people say "take a break" during exam prep. Sure. But what does that mean? Scrolling through your phone? That doesn't reset your brain the same way.

A 2023 meta-analysis found that music engagement has an overall beneficial effect on stress-related outcomes. That's analyzing multiple studies, not just one. The evidence is solid in that active musical participation leads to real benefits for both cognitive and psychosocial functioning.

Unlike doomscrolling on TikTok, the guitar is different because it's active but not exhausting:​

• You're using your hands in a coordinated way
• You're listening actively to what you're creating
• You're getting immediate feedback (sounds good or doesn't)
• Your mind focuses on something totally unrelated to exams
• The repetitive motion creates a meditative state​

Your nervous system actually calms down. Research on mindfulness techniques shows that rhythmic, repetitive activities improve concentration and reduce anxiety. Playing guitar does this without you having to "try" to meditate.​

Plus you get instant feedback. You play a note. It sounds right or it doesn't.

During exam season when everything feels uncertain and you won't know your results for weeks, this immediate cause-and-effect is weirdly satisfying.

Oh yeah.​

The Research on Students and Music

There's actual data on this published in the Asia-pacific Journal of Convergent Research Interchange.

After the pandemic, researchers looked at how university students used music to cope with academic stress during online classes. 43.8% of students reported changing their musical behavior specifically because of academic stress. Students increased their music use as a coping strategy across the board.​

The study found significant correlations between music use and every type of academic stress they measured:

• Difficulty understanding content
• Depression and anxiety
• Communication challenges
• Boredom with material
• General overwhelm

Music helped with all of it.​

In 2020, 57% of Americans said music helped their mental health. More than half. That's not some fringe thing. That's mainstream evidence that this works for most people.​

Your Brain on Guitar (The Science Part)

fMRI scans show that when people play guitar, especially when they're jamming or improvising, their brains sync up activity between different regions. The parts that process music and the parts that control your hands have to talk to each other really fast. This builds neural connections.​

Scientists also found that learning guitar creates a dopamine rush similar to leveling up in a video game. Every time you get better at something on guitar, even something small, your brain rewards you. This builds confidence that carries over to other areas of your life.​

One study on veterans with PTSD used guitar lessons as therapy. Participants said that practice brought them a peaceful feeling and helped traumatic memories fade. If guitar can help with that level of psychological stress, it can definitely handle exam stress.​

Music affects both the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the autonomous nervous system. Translation: it works on your stress from two different biological angles. Heart rate goes down. Blood pressure drops. Your body physically relaxes.​

The 20-Minute Reset Strategy

Your brain needs recovery time the same way your muscles do after working out. Pushing through endless study sessions without breaks isn't productive. It's just exhausting yourself and getting worse results.

Using the research available and advice by top schools, I've created a to-do list with different study goals.

Study Block	Guitar Break	Why It Works
50 minutes focused study	15-20 minutes playing	Brain needs recovery time like muscles after working out​
Deep concentration work	No-pressure noodling	Prevents mental fatigue and maintains quality
Memorization or problem-solving	Play familiar songs	Different neural pathways get activated
Reading dense material	Learn something new on guitar	Dopamine hit restores motivation​

So for focused study, study for 50 minutes, play guitar for 15-20 minutes, then go back to studying. The work you do after that guitar break will be better quality than if you'd just pushed through.

Here are the results with and without guitar breaks.

Studying With Guitar Breaks	Studying Without Breaks (The Grind)
Study for 50 minutes, feeling focused.	Study for 50 minutes, feeling good.
Take a 15-minute guitar break. Mind is cleared.	Keep studying. Focus starts to drop after 60 minutes.
Study for another 45 minutes. Still feel sharp.	By hour three, you're just reading words. Nothing is sticking.
Cortisol levels are managed. You feel less overwhelmed.	Cortisol levels are high. You feel anxious and tired.
Total focused study time: 2 hours.	Total "study" time: 2 hours. Actual focused time: maybe 60 minutes.

I've written way more than I thought I would, so let me conclude with this.

I'm not going to tell you guitar will make exam season easy. It won't. Exams still suck, studying is still hard.

But guitar gives you moments where you're not just a stressed-out student. You're someone giving their mind the break it needs to actually function.​

And remember that the guitar doesn't stop being useful after exam season ends. Life is always going to be stressful in different ways.

Learn guitar now, you'll have this tool forever.