The Student’s Guide to Managing Stress
We're all familiar with stress, as it is an inevitable part of today's life. Everyone experiences stress to some extent, especially students. As a bit of pressure can be beneficial and push you towards reaching your goals, too much of it can be harmful in many ways. Statistics show that stress is one of the leading mental health concerns among U.S. college students.
Therefore, it is crucial that you learn how to manage your stress. To do that, you must know more about what causes it and then move on to finding solutions for it.
In this article, we first tackle the factors contributing to student stress, then move on to tips and techniques to manage it successfully. So, if you're a student experiencing stress, below you can read our how to deal with stress for students guide so you can learn more about how stress can affect you as a student, its causes, and how you can deal with it.
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How Can Stress Affect Students?
The stressful moments you experience as a student can leave a mark on your physical and emotional health and impact your academic success.
Studies show that stress can affect your concentration as well as your learning and memory processes, leading to poor academic performance. It can contribute to mental health problems, such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, etc. In addition, stressful experiences tend to impact sleep quality and quantity, causing sleep disorders and affecting the immune system.
A survey by the American Psychological Association (APA) reports several symptoms that people experience due to stress. The list includes:
Anger
Fatigue
Lack of motivation
Headache
Depression
Change in appetite, etc.
Besides these, stress can affect your overall body, impacting your nervous, respiratory, cardiovascular, digestive, immune, and muscular systems. According to the American Institute of Stress (AIS), experiencing stress for a more extended period can cause heartburn, insomnia, high blood sugar, risk of heart attack, fertility problems, tense muscles, missed periods, and the list goes on.
With all that being said, managing your stress as a student is crucial to stop or prevent any of the above from happening.
What Are the Causes of Stress in Students?
They say the first step to solving a problem is identifying that there is one. Similarly, if you want to manage your stress, first, you must admit that you are stressed, then carefully consider all the factors that may be contributing to your stress.
Depending on the person, these factors can vary. However, things like finances and exams are almost always among the main stressors when it comes to students. Below you can find some of the most common causes of stress in students and learn more about them.
Exams
The apparent factor causing student stress is having exams. The pressure to work well on midterms and finals can sometimes be too high, making them stressful for students.
Whether you're a high-achieving student, worrying about getting a good grade, or just someone trying to pass, feeling stressed before and during an exam is something you have in common with most students. Making the time to prepare for an exam while also struggling between assignments, homework, projects, and whatnot can make you feel overwhelmed and contribute to stress and anxiety. In addition, exams often make up a large percentage of the final grade, making them even more stressful.
Finances
Just like for most people, finances also pose a stressor to students. A survey shows that 73% of Americans rank finance as the number one factor causing stress in their life.
Being a student comes at a time when you are working towards a decent job and still do not have the money to pay your monthly bills. College tuition can be expensive; you may also have to pay for a place to live, food, and everything else. The part-time jobs that students get in order to earn some money while in college or university are usually not enough to cover their expenses. Students often turn to student loans, credit card debt, or any family member for financial help.
This financial debt can lead to stress about their future job while thinking of ways to pay back that debt. For those working a part-time job, that can take their time from studying, hence also contributing to the accumulated stress.
Homesickness
In addition to exam stress and having to deal with finances on your own, being a student away from your home can make everything harder.
When you are used to living with your family members and seeing them every day, missing them and not being able to be with them can make you feel stressed and anxious. This is true for everyone, especially for international students who usually don't get to visit their families as often as a student who only changed cities would. In addition, for students living away from their families for the first time, this experience can be incredibly challenging and may cause them constant stress.
Living with roommates
Not only are you away from your family, but you also have other people to live with. As helpful as this can be, sometimes all it does is cause more stress.
Living with roommates can be challenging and lead to many misunderstandings and problems between one another. Many students are not used to sharing a room with someone else, and they may feel like this is invading their privacy and causing other types of discomfort. Especially when students cohabitate with someone they hardly know. All this can lead to highly stressful experiences, on top of everything else causing stress.
Work schedules
As mentioned above, many students choose to work while studying so that they can better manage their finances. Statistics show that over 309,900 students are working part-time in the United States.
While having a job as a student can help you financially, it does interfere with full-time education. Trying to accommodate your schedule so that you can follow your studies while also keeping your job can leave you overwhelmed and put daily pressure on you.
Social life
Even as a student, you still need to have a social life. The social stress that most students experience often comes from peer pressure or the social expectations to go out often and make lots of friends.
Between trying to get the best out of their studies, probably working a part-time job, and being part of social activities, students are often left feeling overworked and stressed. Looking to find the balance between successfully integrating social situations into your student life can affect your studying and mood.
Romantic relationships
Romantic relationships take dedication and time. That's why relationships can often be a source of pressure, stress, and tension with everything going on in a student's life.
People in a relationship want to spend as much time together as possible. This can be an issue regarding the busy schedule of a student. In addition, when there are problems in the relationship, they can affect your concentration and motivation to study. Research states that female students tend to experience higher stress from love relationships than male students.
How to Deal With Stress
Knowing how to manage stress is crucial for students. With all going on in their day-to-day lives, accumulating stress could lead to health problems, anxiety, and depression, impacting their academic performance and personal relationships.
Effective stress management techniques can help you calm yourself in stressful situations and reduce your stress. Below we present some stress management tips for college students that you can give a try.
Sleep well
How many times have you pulled an all-nighter the day before you had an exam? Students are known for their unhealthy sleep habits, with most of them getting an average of 6-6.9 hours of sleep per night.
As lack of sleep can affect you in so many ways, getting enough of it comes with various benefits. Statistics show that 80% of Americans agree that not getting enough sleep causes increased stress and difficulty concentrating. On the other hand, it is reported that besides improving your mood and reducing your stress, quality sleep also helps you think more clearly, get sick less often, and lower your risk for serious health problems.
In addition, getting enough sleep will give you the chance to recover from a stressful day and prepare for the next one. Avoiding large meals and caffeine before bedtime, sleeping in a dark and quiet room with a cool temperature, removing electronic devices, and being consistent with your sleep schedule, are strategies that guarantee a good night's sleep.
Eat well
Food and stress are often closely linked together. According to Harvard Medical School, stress can suppress the appetite in the short term but make us overeat if the stressful situations persist. On the other hand, healthy eating can help us fight stress by boosting our immune system and providing the extra energy we need when dealing with stressful situations.
In addition, a balanced diet can also help the digestive system function, supports muscles, strengthens bones, lowers the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, supports a healthy pregnancy, etc.
Maintaining a healthy diet consists of choosing fresh and nutritious foods and limiting the intake of processed, fried, and fast foods. To help you with that, the U.S Department of Agriculture's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) has published a nutrition guide called "My plate", designed to help you learn how to eat healthier. You can access "My plate" online to learn more about it.
Exercise
Another way of fighting stress by taking care of your health and body is by being physically active. Regular exercise tends to improve your mental health and mood while reducing your risk of depression. When we exercise, our brain produces endorphins, which make us feel happier.
Additional benefits include enhancing your thinking and learning skills, improving sleep, helping lower the risk of heart diseases, etc.
As a student, you can choose from many ways in which you can engage in physical activity, depending on what best suits you and your schedule. If you don't have the time to go to the gym or play any sport, you can walk to the campus, ride your bike more, use the stairs instead of the elevator, or even stretch to relieve some tension.
If you need the motivation to start, you can invite a friend, join a sports club, or simply begin incorporating as little as 10 minutes of exercise into your day.
Make a plan (stay organized)
As a student, keeping track of everything from class schedules, assignments, finances, and social activities can feel overwhelming. Making a plan to manage your time can actually prevent stress and help you decrease it. Calendars and planners are standard tools you can use to keep everything organized.
On the other hand, keeping your living environment tidy and organized is also essential to managing your stress. A cluttered area can keep you from concentrating, decrease productivity, and even cause health problems like weight gain and stress. Thus, try to keep your space as organized as possible for a more positive experience in many aspects, including roommate relationships.
Avoid procrastination
Procrastination is quite common among students. It is reported that approximately 80%–95% of college students engage in procrastination to some degree. However, it often results in leaving everything for the last minute leading to significant stress. Statistics from a study show that 94% of people indicate that procrastination negatively affects their happiness.
Some useful tips for avoiding procrastination include creating a plan, breaking everything into small tasks, so you don't get overwhelmed, and focusing your attention on your goal. Next, try keeping your space organized and removing any distractions, and most importantly, remember that the sooner you start, the sooner you will be done with everything.
Maintain a social life
Maintaining a social life as a student is all about finding a balance between friends and studies. You do not want to completely miss social events and focus only on your studies, nor do you want to spend so much time outside and with friends leaving your studies behind.
Research shows that friendships and interaction with others significantly impact the student experience at university. It contributes to the learning process and academic adjustment and improves their overall well-being.
So next time you study for an exam, take a break by having a coffee with a friend or going on a relaxing walk. It can be what you need to keep up where you left with more energy and a clearer mind.
Talk about it / seek help
Sharing our problems and concerns with others helps us understand that we are not alone. Family members and friends are the people that we usually turn to to find comfort and a listening ear. Sometimes all we need is to take things off our chest, to keep going through life. Or, often, we need to listen to the experiences of others to gain some perspective.
You can contact many resources to help you manage stress in college. In addition to talking to your loved ones, you can always seek help from on-campus mental health student services or local therapy centers. You can try the national 998 Lifeline to talk with trained professionals offering free support about emotional distress.
Conclusion
We all deal with stress to different extents. However, knowing what triggers it and how to manage it can help us reduce it and protect us from its impact. By taking care of our bodies through healthy sleeping and eating, exercising, staying organized, and talking to others, we can get a handle on student stressors.
Ultimately, try to focus on your main goal, which is graduating, and remember that all this is temporary and everything you are going through will be worth it someday!