Stress is one word that every college student or worker is familiar with. According to helpguide.org, the formal definition of stress is your body’s response to any type of demand or threat, which is also known as the fight or flight response. Stress in small amounts is fine, but too much stress can cause negative effects on your health, such as heart diseases, depression, anxiety, and sleep problems. And as finals are growing closer, students in college have more reasons to feel stressed. College can be very stressful and can cause students to feel very overwhelmed or depressed, especially in their first year. However, there are ways you can handle stress. Here are the six ways that you can deal with stress from college.

1. Exercise.

One thing that has always helped me with stress is taking the time to exercise. Exercise can relieve anxiety and can help you to focus better in class. It’s also very beneficial for helping you stay fit.

It can be very hard to set aside time for exercising, especially if you are taking a lot of hard courses, but try to set aside 15 minutes to exercise three times a week. You could even opt for taking the stairs instead of the elevator to class or taking a longer walk to class. Whatever the case, exercising can really help relieve a lot of stress that can be caused by the pressure from courses.

2. Study and plan assignments.

One of the most common things that almost every college student will do is cram for a test or turn an assignment in at the last minute. Almost every student has at least once tried to turn in an online assignment at exactly 11:59 p.m. on the due date.

However, doing assignments or studying at the last minute can cause unnecessary stress. Therefore, it’s better to either do the assignment right away or break the assignment into chunks each day. Most students will use a planner to help them decide how to break the assignment or studying into chunks.

You can also plan how much time you will spend on each part of the assignment. For example, you may decide that you will spend Monday studying for 15 minutes or an hour the next day.

The one exception to this is if you are the type of person who can't do an assignment in chunks. I’ve heard of several people who work better on assignments by finishing the assignment all in one day. If this is the case, you should at least do it as soon as possible to get the assignment out of the way. This will help you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by your workload.

3. Avoid caffeine.

This is something in which I personally have a hard time doing since I run on coffee. Caffeine, however, can cause more stress and anxiety since it can cause your heart to race. I notice often that when I drink coffee before an exam, it worsens my test anxiety. Therefore, it's best to avoid coffee before a test or if your dealing with a lot of stress.

4. Get plenty of sleep.

This is the one thing that a lot of students in college don't follow. Especially since a lot of students pull all-nighters where they stay up all night studying for their exams.

Not getting enough sleep can cause major problems with focusing in class and with memory. You can also end up over studying for an exam if you spend too much time studying with no breaks. Pulling an all-nighter won’t help you get the grade that you are hoping to get on your exam. Therefore, it’s best advised to stop studying an hour before bedtime, preferably at 9:00 p.m. or 10:00 p.m.

It’s also best that you make sure that you are getting nine to ten hours of sleep. Students that get only four or five hours of sleep are more likely to feel stress. Therefore, if you really want to relieve your stress, you should try getting enough sleep every day.

5. Listen to music.

Music is a great way to take your mind off of an assignment or test. Classical music is especially soothing. Listening to music can also you complete assignments. When I am trying to do my homework, I will often listen to classical music since it is not only soothing, but it also helps keep my mind focused. Unless you are the type of person who can’t listen to music when working, then I suggest listening to music to help relieve stress.

6. Try taking one course of interest.

When I was taking Calculus, I knew beforehand that the class would be very stressful since I had never had any experience with taking a Calculus course in high school. Therefore, since one of my interests was acting, I took a theater course right after my Calculus course in order to relieve any stress that I had from Calculus. I'm now thankful that I did this since when I was under a lot of stress from Calculus, going to my theater class helped relieve a lot of that stress since it was something that I was interested in and it kept my mind off of my Calculus course.

If you are taking a really hard course and can fit an extra class into your schedule, you should try taking at least one course that you find interesting or that features something that you enjoy, such as history, theater, or math. Whatever it is, if you know that it will help take your mind off of a difficult course, you should at least try it.

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So, when you start to feel overwhelmed by the workload of college, you should practice some of these techniques in order to help make college less overwhelming. I know more than anyone how difficult college can be and how stress can take a toll on your life. However, if you follow the tips from above, you can avoid the harmful effects that stress can have on your health and start to enjoy college.