Monday, October 30, 2006

Stressed Out College Students

College life can be very stressful. Probably all college students experience stress at least once a week. Stress can be positive and serve to motivate, but usually works in a negative way. One possibility for this could be the workload. Students typically have a very busy week going to classes, doing homework for those classes, writing papers, preparing speeches, and studying for exams. With all these contributing factors stress levels are likely to rise. The desire to obtain good grades is probably the most common factor that leads to stress. A person's social life can also cause them to become stressed out. Also, people who play sports in college are at a greater risk than non atheltes. Between going to classes and practices, their free time is very limited. Dr. Gregory Hall gives important warning signs to know when you are stressed.

-Changes in sleep patterns; taking longer to fall asleep; waking up tired and not well rested.
-Changes in eating habits.
-More frequent headaches than is normal for you.
-Recurring colds and minor illness.
-Frequent muscle ache and/or tightness.
-More disorganized than normal for you.
-Increased difficulty in task completion.
-A greater sense of persistent time pressure.
-Increased generalized frustration and anger.

So are you one of these stressed out college students? What is your biggest cause of stress and what is the best way for you to deal with it?

2 comments:

Geoff Enz said...

Stress is common place in the college atmosphere, where students have to read books, study for exams and type papers all at the same time. Having all of these variables tie in with the lack of sleep and a person leisure time leads many people to procrastinate. The increase workload that teachers put on students is to be expected, since we are in college. Even superman could not get everything accomplished that needs to be done in stressful work week. Stress is commonplace in the work environment, so I figure that we had better find successful ways of dealing with it because we will be dealing with it for the rest of our lives.

EBO said...

Indeed, college is a stressful time of students. Personally, I’ve found that I struggle to sleep when I am stressed out which then makes it difficult to focus in classes. As a result, I am forced to make a decision: cut into my sleeping time to try to study more to make up for what I am missing in class or try to get more sleep knowing I will not know those sections of notes as well but hoping to end the problem before it develops further. Essentially what I am faced with is making a decision based on the marginal costs and benefits of each. The problem is deciding which choice does have more benefits.