It’s that time of the year again. Finals. Where we take to the library, stacks of books crammed in our hands and backpacks, and prepare to hibernate for two weeks in hopes of getting grades worthy enough of passing us onto yet another grueling semester. For those of you in general education classes– appreciate what you have. For those of you facing upper division this semester– I feel your pain. As the days of “Intro to Geology” and “Poli Sci 101” fade into the distance, we prepare for the brutal battles ahead. 

Regardless of how prepared we may feel, however, it’s inevitable that stress will prove to be the most difficult of obstacles. Not because we cannot manage our time or because we have allowed ourselves to fall behind, but because of certain types of professors. According to a study by Victoria Tennant at Johns Hopkins University, adults ordinarily fail to recognize the incidence and magnitude of stress in the lives of students and they perceive students as having lower levels of stress than the students themselves feel they have.   

As our classes become more difficult in content and our responsibilities outside of the classroom grow, stress becomes more and more overbearing. For example, in one of my classes I have an original online discussion board post due, a peer response due a few days later, two to three 1-hour long videos to watch, an hour-long online lecture to attend, one to two chapters of textbook reading, AND an hour long online lecture to attend, all as part of ONE week’s worth of assignments. That means that this process repeats weekly. Imagine this amount of work, for 5-6 classes, in addition to working 15-20 hours a week and being an active member in extracurricular activities. Sleep and I don’t see each other very often anymore.  

But I’m definitely not alone in trying to hold the weight of the world on my shoulders. I know plenty of students who have just as much, if not more work to do on a regular basis. But when we students tell our professors that assignments are too time-consuming or that we're being assigned too much work, more often than not the professors attribute the complaints to laziness or poor time management skills.   

Stress is neutral. The difference between good stress and bad stress depends on how a person individually experiences a stressful event. Good stress happens when one feels stimulated and capable of managing the situation, even when posed with a challenge. This type of stress activates higher centers of thinking in the brain and prepares the body for action. Bad stress occurs when a person feels threatened or not in control of a situation. These types of situations affect both the brain and the body in ways that are destructive to physical and psychological health. Constant and unrelieved stress, such as having a constant stream of useless busy work in classes, leaves students feeling overwhelmed rather than challenged and that the body doesn’t have time to relax or recover.  This state of "hyperarousal," where blood pressure rises, breathing and heart rates speed up, blood vessels constrict, and muscles tense up, leads to stress disorders. High levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, depress the immune system, too, so it’s really no surprise that sickness spreads like the plague during finals each year like clockwork.   

You can Google and find endless amounts of articles on “how to mentally prepare for finals” or “10 ways to beat stress,” but this isn’t going to keep your professor from assigning a final paper, a final project, and a final exam all due on the same day. FYI professors are given quotas of exactly how many students in their classes are “supposed to” fail, pass, or excel. This means that, even if you are blessed with a professor who genuinely does care and worry about your stress, they’ll most likely keep the impossible and never-ending assignments in an effort to maintain this "standard level of difficulty" (AKA mandatory failure quota). If that's your case, well then it’s beyond the scope of this article on stress and more along the lines of an in-depth analysis of the higher education system. But that's another story for another time.   

So this December, as your shivering in the below-freezing Love Library and on the verge of a mental breakdown, just keep calm and remember that it’s most likely not you: it’s them. Stress is unavoidable, but how you choose to tackle it on is well in your control. By not focusing on how unbearable the amount of stress you seem to have is, you can turn that same pressure into motivation and crank out some of the best work you’ve ever done. As they say, “it’s not the load that breaks you down– it’s the way you carry it.”