College, obviously requires significantly more effort
from students than high school. Once you enter
college, you will probably find that your fellow
students are more motivated, your instructors are
more demanding, the work is more difficult, and you
are expected to be more independent. These higher
academic standards and expectations are even more
evident in graduate school. As a result of these new
demands, it is common for college students to
experience greater levels of stress related to
academics.
Many students find that they need to develop new
skills in order to balance academic demands with a
healthy lifestyle. Fortunately, the University of
Michigan offers many resources to help students
develop these skills. Many students find that they can
reduce their level of academic stress by improving
skills such as time management, stress management,
and relaxation.
Whether it’s your parents pushing you to boost your
GPA, teachers criticizing you for a less-than-stellar test
scores, or your own drive to get in to your first-choice
college — or some combination of the three —
academic pressure can get the best of you if you don’t
learn how to deal with it properly.
The Pros and Cons of Stress
Stress is anything that alters your natural balance.
When stress is present, your body and your mind must
attend to it in order to return you to balance. Your
body reacts to stress by releasing hormones that help
you cope with the situation. That in turn takes energy
away from the other functions of your brain, like
concentrating, or taking action. There are two
different sources of stress: external triggers, like
getting a poor grade or breaking up with your
girlfriend/boyfriend, and internal triggers, like placing
high expectations on yourself. We are stressed from
academics while trying to meet up with academic
demands, our parents/guardians, multiple
assignments, and exams. Stress is bad for our health
and brains, this why we have less productivity when
we are stressed.
Hence, we did be sharing few tips with you on “HOW
TO PREVENT STRESS, AN INTERVIEW WITH
A psychotherapist who has helped countless teens
cope with school stresses, about her best tips for
managing academic anxiety. Scroll down for five
helpful ways to get through your high school years
with less stress.
1. Take time for self-care.
He emphasizes that you have to start with the basics,
like sleep. “You have to give your organism the means
to cope with stress, and that includes healthy food,
non-harmful substances, sleep (dramatically more
than most kids think they need), down time… Building
into your day right-brain activity that lets you digest
what you’ve been going through and process it. Those
are some basic and almost biological needs we have.”
Taking time to pause from the relentless pace of
everyday life and enjoy creative activities that keep you
from dwelling on or stressing over school pressures
can go far in decreasing your stress levels.
2. Learn to change your thinking.
“You cannot get stressed out unless you believe your
thoughts,” says Stiffelman. “All stress is precipitated by
stressful thinking.”
When you start stressing about not finishing your
project on time, your mind builds a case for why what
you believe is going to happen will happen — and this
can be paralyzing. So, when combating negative
thinking patterns, he recommends coming up with
specific examples to counter the stressful thoughts.
Think instead of concrete ways that you can create the
time to work on a project, and how your previous line
of thinking isn’t accurate.
3. Take assignments one baby step at a time.
He however, advises her young clients to chunk their
work down into manageable, bite-sized portions that
feel less overwhelming than looking at the big picture.
If you have an essay to write that’s making you feel
anxious, list the individual steps that lead to the
destination of the essay being finished (finding
sources, creating an outline, writing an intro), and the
task will begin to feel less daunting.
“List what you have going on, and list how much time
each thing is going to take,” she suggests. “Chunking
things down makes them feel more manageable and
less anxiety-inducing.”
4. Lower your goals.
No, we’re not talking about being a slacker. According
to Stiffelman, following the truism “Lower your goals,
you’ll achieve more,” can help to relieve
stress and boost academic success.
Instead of setting your goal to be getting the highest
grade in the class, set a goal to feel satisfied with your
performance.
5. Stay balanced during exam periods.
The importance of taking breaks and working in time
to relax during your busiest and most stressful
periods can’t be overestimated, Stiffelman urges. Not
matter how hard you push yourself, nobody can
maintain constant focus, and you will burn yourself
out if you try. Take frequent, short breaks for fun
activities so that you’ll be able to go back to your
writing or studying refreshed.
“Do something that, even for 15 minutes, brings you
back to yourself,” says Stiffelman. “I’ll often say, ‘What
did you love to do when you were six years old?’ Do a
little bit of that when you’re in prep mode to
counterbalance the stress — no brain can work for 24
hours.”
Tell us: How do you cope with pressure at school? Do
you think schools have a responsibility to help their
students manage stress?
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