College Stress

College Stress

People are exposed to stress on a daily basis. Modern life is full of hassles, deadlines, frustrations and demands. Especially college students have issues with stress. College life can be very stressful. The competition of grades, the need to perform, relationships, career choices and any other aspects of the college environment cause stress. Stress follows student in the daily life and leads to mental and physical side effects, but students are able to cope and even prevent stress in different ways. Stress exists in different forms in a college life of a student. First of all, some students experience stress as an extra burst of adrenaline. This form of stress helps to get a lot of done and meet any challenges. For example, sometimes students get a lot of assignments and usually they have to prepare them for the next day. This situation seems to be very stressful. However, this kind of stress, which refers to be positive stress, leads students to finish their homework. Positive stress is usually a short-term pressure. Unlike positive stress, there is another form of stress, what some people might call negative stress. Negative stress induces that people cannot return to a relaxed state. For instance, students have a lot of assignments, tests and presentations, but they postpone their work to another point of time until they stand under time pressure and feel very stressful. This form of stress, which is negative, usually refers to psychological effects and physical symptoms. However, a treatment and prevention of negative stress are possible in a college life. When a college student is stressed out it can lead to mental effects. One effect could be suspiciousness. Students have usually a busy schedule, which contains of tests or other appointments. Therefore they might be thinking, how they can manage all the things and are starting to get panic attacks. Another result of suspiciousness could be a feeling of hopelessness in coping with college life when everything seems impossible to manage for a student. These two examples of mental effects are caused by stress. In addition to mental effects of stress, long- term exposure to stress can lead to physical problems. One example of a physical problem is a headache. A lot of college students have headaches everyday. One cause of a headache could be loosing appetite. This refers to decreasing weight. On the other hand, because of the pain in the head it could be also very hard to concentrate. A student might be very exhausted and might not be able to continue his studying. A headache as an effect of chronic stress refers to bad physical conditions. A college student may feel that stress in his life is out of control, but he can always control the way he responses to it. Treating stress is all about developing ways to deal with stress. One method of treating stress could be for example, if a student has problems with the assignment, he should go to a workshop or talk and ask the tutor for help. Another method could be getting the mind of stress and thus the headache by doing something a student loves to do, like meeting with friends or reading a book. Stress treatment involves changing the stressful situation by looking for help or making time for rest and relaxation.
A student should also determine what he can do to change things so that a stressful problem does not present itself in the future. Every college student is able to deal with a stressful situation in advance, doing the best to anticipate and prevent it. One point of prevention of stress is time management. If a student has a good organized schedule he might prevent stress. Furthermore, a student should participate in social life. Even though a college student has to set priorities and study, he needs also a changeable company and environment to obviate stress. To prevent a problem in the future a student should change the way he operates daily.
In conclusion, college students can welcome stress as a friend or run from it, but it will be there and will cause mental effects, like suspiciousness or headaches as a physical symptom. However, students need to find a way that will work for them to treat and prevent persistent stress.