Stress is the epitome of challenges in life. Every single person in life has stress. Most people don't know how much it can actually impact one's health, in the short-run and long-run.
College kids especially deal with lots of mental stress in balancing classes, sleep, social lives, parties, extracurricular activities and sometimes jobs while still figuring out who we are.
Unfortunately, stress is not something that we can get rid of forever. However, there are a lot of adjustments one can make in their life to better deal with stress. The first thing to do is identify your main source of stress.
While interviewing students around Radford University about stress in college, I found that procrastination-related issues are a huge source of stress for students. I asked mostly senior students and some additional lower class men who are usually dealing with the most stress in college.
Megan, who is a sophomore at Radford University said, "Stress has definitely increased ever since [she] got to college, and [she] tries to remember that life won't even be bad compared to senior year and after graduation."
Another sophomore named Katie claims that "stress is pretty bad, but it still seems steady compared to upperclassmen's schedules. Whenever I get stressed, I get really tired and it wears me out."
A Radford Senior student named Sarah, whose major course of study is in a STEM field, said she has a "severe amount of stress usually caused by procrastination," and claims she "deals with stress terribly, usually resorting to alcohol, sleeping or working out."
Elizabeth Brobeck, also a senior at Radford University, said she "just gets everything done that stresses her out," so she gets it out of the way quickly.
Landon Kime, another senior at Radford University said, "Stress for me isn't too bad," since he "takes it day by day and [tries] to stay happy." As opposed to stress caused by putting things off, Kime said he "purposefully puts off things so that [he] doesn't have to stress over it."
It sounds like stress is generally hard to manage for both under- and upperclassmen. The fact that a lot of students still sometimes have trouble managing time and work shows just how difficult it really is to master organization in college. If more college students practiced using time wisely or got more knowledgeable about it, their stress levels might be cut in half.
In the meantime, people dealing with surreal amounts of stress in college should face the fact that stress is a part of life and is completely normal. According to science, our bodies are built to deal with stress, with built-in stress relievers like deep breathing, sleeping, and endorphins obtained through exercise.
Another thing to note about stress is that each and every day, people learn how to better cope with stress even if they don't try super hard. What may be stressful times for students currently might be nothing to us in 10 years from now.
It's up to college students to prepare themselves for stress in college and learn how to deal with it best.
