Originally Posted by fawadhash

For essay introduction, you can give background of the issue and end your introduction with your thesis statement and how the following paragraph will help in proving that thesis statement.
As for nerves, it entirely depends on you. If you consciously try to control your thinking you can. For essay, just consciously keeping reminding to control yourself during brainstorming and outline phase. Once you are done with that, your mind would be ease for rest of 2:30 hours. For precise first do short easily doable questions and then after quickly finishing them, do precise and comprehension, the more time you have for precise and comprehension, the calmer your nerves would be.

And sorry for delay, I intended to answer this twice yesterday but something came up both times and I have to leave my pc.