--Original published at marybraun99

Even before college I have dealt with crazy amounts of stress, especially coming into college, it was a whole new experience that I had to go through and I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle it. Before coming to college, I was dealing with a lot of stress that followed me into college, that I am still dealing with. I have never been good at handling stress, because I get overwhelmed very easily, and most of the time can not figure out a healthy solution to coping with the everyday stress.

I am not very good at time management, and getting my assignments done when they should be done, because I am a huge procrastinator and try to finish all of my assignments right before they are do. This leads to massive amounts of stress, that I know would be solved if I was able to better manage my time, not only with work, but with family and friends as well. Even being in high school I was never good at managing my time with my friends, and my family leaving me always feeling bad about not spending enough time with my family.

Currently, I try to take a shower and set out a planner of things that are due every week on the Sunday before the week starts so I know what I have to accomplish for that week, and try to finish everything during Monday or Tuesday so that I am able to spend the rest of my week without worrying too much about all of my work. This is effective, especially for trying to manage my time, because when I get my work done, I can then be with my friends and not have to worry about procrastinating and worrying if my work will get done on time.

I also try to talk to my friends, and take long relaxing showers and do face masks often during the week when I am not doing anything else. I also try to give myself alone time during the week to focus on myself and not stress myself out more than I already was. I think this is also effective, especially after days when I just finish a lot of work, because it gives me something to look forward to, and help me get through the week,

I think something I could do more effectively would be to just manage my time a little bit better and not try to push things off until the last second so that I won’t be stressed out as often. Work is my #1 stress factor in college, so being able to handle my workload easier will benefit me greatly.

--Original published at Matt's College Blog

As a Computer Science major, I am required to take Calculus II and Algorithms, both of which are very mathematically dense classes. Given that I’m not particularly quick with math, this causes quite a bit of stress on a regular basis when doing the homework or taking exams for these classes.

My current strategies for managing this stress involve not doing so and attempting to focus on something else until I have no choice but to power through the assignment as best I can. This, obviously, is a terrible strategy and serves only to increase the overall stress level. In the Algorithms class in particular I often find myself putting off homework assignments for an entire week until the night they’re due. The assignments get done but they are far below the level of what I could be producing in terms of quality.

In terms of exams, I’m often stressed in those classes because I know the problems take a significant amount of time to complete and I’m often left worried that I won’t be able to finish within the time limit as a result. I’ve been told in the past by counselors in high school and here at Etown that I may have moderate ADD which certainly doesn’t help with the time limit.

A couple of strategies I could try incorporating would be starting assignments way before they’re due rather than at the last minute, requesting extra time on exams, and probably studying significantly more in preparation of the exams such that my ability to recall information would be increased.

--Original published at Pisacane Perspectives

There’s a lot of stress that comes with being Music Therapy major, which can come from a lot of different places such as written exams, playing exams, countless assignments, performances, and a number of other things. Because of this, there’s a few different ways in which I manage and relieve stress.

When it comes to assignments, I become easily stressed out and overwhelmed. To deal with this, I keep a color coded planner so I can keep track of everything I need to do during the week. Being able to break it down and keep all the due dates organized makes me feel a lot better about it and makes me feel like I have a better handle on all the things I need to get done. Also, being able to check a lot of things off my “To-Do” list each day relieves some stress, too.

I handle stress from performances and performing exams in one way– practice. Sitting down an practicing a piece or skill until I’m confident with it makes me feel a lot better about it. If I have an exam on material I’m not familiar with I stress out a lot more about it than I do with exams with material that I’ve gotten right several times in practice.

I also have a few ways that I relieve stress in general. These include origami, yoga, dancing and getting together with friends at the Korean Pop Culture club to learn about something that’s not related to major and it purely for fun.

These methods help me to stay organized and productive so I think they work pretty well. The ones that relieve the most stress for me are dancing and going to club meetings, which I think improve my mental health more than they do my academic, which is still important. Overall, I think I have good ways of managing my stress.

--Original published at Site Title

For this week’s first impression post, I chose to discuss the first prompt. No matter how hard we try to avoid it, stress is an inevitable thing that will always find a way to creep into our lives more often than we would like it to, especially as college students. However, there are many things that can be done to help keep stress at a minimum level.

Overall, I personally feel like having good time management is the best way to manage stress. The better you are at managing time, the more time you have to relax and do things that you find enjoyable. I like to make sure that I am efficient and organized when getting homework done, and that I am not waiting until the last minute to complete it. I have found that if I get my work done and out of the way, I have more time to spend time with my friends, relax, eat meals at regular times, get exercise, and get regular sleep, which all majorly help improve my stress levels. Though I still feel very stressed out at times, as most people usually so, I have found that doing these things have effectively helped me to be successful in improving my overall levels of stress.

To be even more effective in managing my stress, I think it would be realistic to try to get ahead on some work. As of right now, my strategy is to do all of the work that I need to be done in the near future and then take a break. While I value those breaks and don’t really need to work ahead, it would more than likely reward me to pick one or two nights a week where I get some extra work done instead of watching Netflix.

--Original published at KatiesPerspectives

It’s no surprise that college students are ordinarily stressed in one way or another most of the time. According to the 2015 National College Health Assessment, 30% of students reported that stress has negatively affected their academic performance within the past year, and 85% had felt overwhelmed by everything they had to do at some point within the past year. So how does one cope with this? Personally, I find that college stress can be much different than life stress in that, no matter how stressed you are, you still have to submit that assignment by midnight, or that paper by 7 a.m. There are many things a college student (such as myself) can incorporate into their lives that (1) don’t take up too much time, and (2) can help reduce the stresses of their hectic lives.

I find that when I am stressed about a paper or a project that is due, I still try to force myself to work for hours on end without breaks just so I can “get it over with,” and “move on” from it. This leads to actually wasting time sitting in one place and getting nowhere with the assignment. Instead of relentlessly hitting this roadblock, I could use this time to go for a walk or go get a coffee and think about something else for awhile. Giving my brain a break from the assignment that I’m not making a dent in could be greatly beneficial to my (and my assignment’s) overall well being in the end.

Something else that I find adds to my stress, is trying to make time for assignments when I’m suppose to be doing something else (i.e., sleeping). I think I forget the importance of sleep and use it as a cushion for extra time if I need it in order to work on an assignment. In class, we learned that without sleep, it is almost impossible to preform well on an assignment or a test the day after. REM sleep and getting enough of it every night is something that must be made of upmost importance to every college student and should not be compromised for the sake of an assignment. This is another thing that I should be more mindful of for the rest of the semester.

Overall, I think a combination of my time management strategies and my prioritization have a lot to do with how I stay on top of everything I have to get done for school. Everything I’m doing now to decompress and manage my assignments seems to be working, and I think I’m in a good position at this point in the semester.

Stress in college: Experts provide tips to cope

--Original published at Collin's Blog

For my blog post this week I chose to watch the TED talk “Making Stress your Friend” by Kelly McGonigal. I thought it could be a useful and healthy lifestyle tip to use especially for college students. While normally the general census on stress is to avoid it at all cost, McGonigal says instead of avoiding stress we should be welcoming and using it to motivate us. People who experience stress, but express it as being unharmful to their health experience less health problems and more success than the people who believe stress is harmful to them. Welcoming stress, showed that your body was energizing itself to prepare for challenges. Your pounding heart and rapid breath are elements meant to provide more energy to the body.
Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist. Before understanding the biological effects of stress, she would tell her patients to try to avoid stress, and that it was bad for their health. When she learned about how understanding stress can be healthier than avoiding it, she immediately began training her patients to understand stress and welcome stress into their lives to help them through challenges. I believe Kelly McGonigal is credible in her research since she has a profession that revolves around understanding how your mental psychology can affect your overall health.
I would like to implement this skill into my life. It could help during exam days, presentations and future interviews. Simply telling my self that stress and anxiety can be good for me, could help me live a healthier life.

--Original published at Max'sPHY105blog

Stress, what many people consider to be the source of their problems in life. Many people define stress when there is a whole lot of it present, but stress in not completely problematic. Stress is needed to accomplish higher achievements, especially in college. Yet at the same time, too much stress is problematic. For this week’s first impression post, I will be commenting on option 1, the prompt about accessing my own stress management strategies. Stress is a topic that I learned more about in by First Year Seminar class. The speaker talked about how different levels of stress affect a person. When a person has little or no stress in his or her life, that person is usually laid back and does not accomplish anything. When a person has moderate stress in his or her life, that person is hard working and achieves more in life. When a person has to much stress in his or her life, that person works without being productive. So stress is needed to succeed in college, but too much stress decreases academic performance. When I think about it, the only get stressed in college when I hear of a whole lot of assignments coming up at one time. This is especially true on the first day of classes when I hear of everything that I will be doing in my classes over the course of the semester.  I ask myself if I am able to do these things. When I get stressed like this, I take things one step at a time. Instead of thinking about getting everything done at once, I ask myself, “What is a priority right now?” Once I have answered this question, I know where to start in my tasks, and if I finish it early, I move on to something else and I always promise give myself some downtime at the end of the day. This thought in mind reduces my stress and inspires me to keep working hard and do my best. I think this stress management strategy works great. I find that it helps me stay focused on my work without getting stressed out over things happening in other courses. I am always inspired knowing that I will have downtime at the end of the day. If I were to incorporate other stress management activities in my life, I might try spending more time with other people. I rarely do this, but I see that every time I do it, it puts stressful things behind me and lets me focus on something else that is not stressful. Simply talking about different things in life is helpful in reducing stress.