Stress in student life - III

College time is one of the most interesting time of life where you can discover your own self and your hidden potentials. This is the time to experiment and choose a path that will take you to the top. So follow these simple tips to de stress yourself --

1. Plan your schedule. Yes, boring as it may sound, but this is the best way to plan your work, study, assignments, presentations etc. Get the right information from the start. Be clear about the kind of assignments, presentations that you are required to give. Most of the universities follow a fixed academic calendar. Get a copy of it and refer to it when planning your work. Most of the teachers give adequate time for handing in assignments --- be sure to give it on time to avoid last minute hiccups. If you are on time, you will not have to run around them alter seeking extensions. Make a realistic timetable and make sure to follow it.

2. Work on your weakest point. This is very important. You must know the area where you are lagging. Some students are good in written work. Some are better in oral presentations. Take time to look for your shortcomings. Take the help of friends and family to recognize yours and work around those shortcomings. There may be six or seven subjects in a semester. Instead of leaving the harder one to the last – work on it more than others. This way you will be saved the panic attacks at the last minute.

3. Prioritize. It is important to be able to differentiate between important tasks and not so important tasks. There will a time when you need to make hard choices. You should be able to make realistic assessments of consequences. It is your choice to whether you want to your assignment or go for the movie. Whatever decision you make will have effect on how you make further progress in your college. Needless to say, handing over assignment should be more important than going for the movie.

4. Develop a stress busting hobby. As said before, it is the duty of a student pay adequate attention to their studies, but at the same time, it is equally important to have a well balanced life which can lead to all round development. There are so many extra curricular and co curricular activities in any college. You can choose any one of them and develop yourself in it. Use this activity when you are stressed out or are unable to concentrate on your studies. This could be in form a a sport, dramatics, singing, dancing or any other enjoyable activity which can make you feel happy again.

5. Make a group: It is very important to have like minded people or people whose company you enjoy around you. Find yourself some good friends on whom you can depend on. Act as each other’s cushions during difficult times. Help each other out and most importantly, give each other a good advice. It is good to have some people Loneliness can make the challenges of your new life seem much worse.

6. Stick to a healthy lifestyle. It is important to take care of your health when you are working hard. A healthy body keeps stress away and gives rise to a healthy mind. A good diet can work wonders and lift your mood and help in coping up with the pressures. Avoid using alcohol and drugs as a way to cope with stress, as these can negatively affect your mood as well as your health Yoga and meditation are very helpful activities for managing stress.

7. Manage your sleep. In one of the famous dialogues in the mystery “ The Bourne identity” – the protagonist who is a secret agent shares his secrets with a partner and frequently repeats that “Rest is a Weapon”. And this is true in our normal lives as well. Sleep deprivation can cause irreparable damage to our health and work if continued for a long time. As a student, when you are required to work under multiple pressures, having a good sleep at night is an advantage you can use effectively.

Stress in student life - II

The profile of an ordinary student has undergone a sea change. These days, a student is not only a student. He has commitments related to employment, personal relationship, and family responsibilities in addition to educational matters. Most students realize this and are quite capable of juggling these multiple responsibilities, but at times, the stresses and strains of coping with multiple roles and their crosscurrents impact adversely upon students. And this is why it is very important for students to adopt some cushions and stress busting techniques in their lives.

Student life is a very exciting and wonderful phase of ones’ life. It is here that a person learns to experience first hand the problems, difficulties and pressures that he/she will face in future. Hence, it is equally important that these students also learn how to cope up or overcome these problems as well. Thus this can also turn out to be the most pressured and stressful phase of life. The time is limited and a lot has to be achieved. Young students try to pack up so many things together in their college years that they end up losing everything.

Let us take a look at some of the factors that cause problems or difficulties to students.

1. Change in Study process : Coming to a college or university after a protected school environment is a transition which overwhelms majority of students. The learning process changes dramatically from classroom teaching to lecture format with focus on self study and broader perspectives. Teaching is no longer confined to blackboards and one book, but encompasses so much of reading material that new students start getting lost. After the first few months, when the pressure of assignments, presentations, exams starts building up, students crack up. Research has shown that under-achieving students have not developed effective ways of coping, or their problems are so overwhelming that their coping mechanisms are to no avail.

2. Change in Lifestyle : Not only does the studying process changes, the whole system changes as the world starts looking at you as an adult and thus starts the process of finding the identity and a place in the world. This is a big psychological upheaval. It also involves many challenges at a practical level. Not all students get a chance to study at a place near to their homes. They are either required to travel long distances, stay in a hostel or put up in rented accommodations. All this requires a change from their previous lifestyle and even the routine eating and cleaning seems to be a big burden.

3. New opportunities : There are a multitude of activities that a student can choose from and get involved in, based on his/her interest. These are but not limited to be sports, social and political activities, dramatics, Literature and so on. The student must involve oneself in such activities as they help in developing a well rounded personality but the other part is that all these activities also need to be given time to gain something out of them. Thus there can be a constant conflict to give time to activities which are enjoyable and activities which are vital.

4. Personal relationships: There is a change in the way the youngsters view relationships today. As a part of growing up process, they get more freedom from the parents and in fact, demand it. They have their own social circle and fear of rejection is very high. They have to keep up with the peer pressure and under such circumstances end up doing things they never wanted to do.

Stress in student life - I

Student life in particular is increasingly becoming more and more complex and difficult with rise in the number of young people opting for higher studies as compared to previous years. The students in fact, never had it so good before. There is a plethora of job opportunities and various new and exciting career avenues which they can take up today.

But with all these good things comes responsibility. The responsibility is towards their own self to realize their own potential, to their friends and family and to the society at large. Since the youth today are more confident and seek independence pretty early in life, they also have to cope with the consequences of their own independent decisions and here in lies the challenge to which they must rise. When the students go headlong into the process of being independent without realizing the responsibility that comes with independence, the conflict arises. And this is when the stress kicks in. The balance which is required is missing and then the promises being to break and falter.

It has been seen that about 50% of American students who enter college do not complete their graduation. And as per U.S. Census figures, only 6 out of every 10 high school seniors go on to college in the following year. The main reason for this dropout has been attributed to the high stress and complexity involved in college studies.