stress management

I had lots of stresses this week. There were so many works and exams. Also, I had a financial problem. I spent all the money that I should use in April. I knew that positive stresses were good, but the stresses I got this week were not the positive things. I even felt headache because of the stresses. Academic pressures increased a lot as the final exams are coming, but my motivation seemed to decrease. I felt hard to catch up certain class. For Japanese, I got some As but some Bs at the exams taken in three weeks. Therefore, I have to get a good mark on Final exam to get an A as final result. The anxiety increased over final exams. Also, there were many works I needed to complete.

I learned in CLS 105 class that I needed to understand the cause, relaxation and organization of stresses. Therefore, I tried to do stress diagram as cause of stress, 10 minute vacation as relaxation of stress, and organization to organize my stresses. To make sure what my stresses were, I made a stress diagram. I first list the sources of stresses. Then, I made the pie chart and divide those into four sections. At the each of the section, I wrote down my stress. The bigger the section, the bigger my stress was. The below picture is my chart.



By doing the stress diagram, I could clearly know the reasons of my stress. The four stresses were financial, school works, coming exams and major. For major, I was not 100 percent of my major but I had to choose the subjects for the next term. I, therefore, had to decide what I wanted to do in the future so that I could decide subjects relate to the major. For financial, I all of my money so that I could not buy anything such as snacks. The stress diagram helped me to find out what was my biggest stress. My biggest stresses were final exam and school works. Especially for Japanese, I had too much homework. Also, I was so sure that the final exam would be very hard, since the exams I had taken were hard. I knew that I could not remove all the stresses. Therefore, I decided to decrease those stresses.

I did the 10 minute vacation as relaxation of my stresses. It helped me to get away from the work for 10 minutes. While I was doing my Japanese homework, I felt headache. Then, I decided to use this strategy. I started to do Facebook for 10 minutes. At first, I thought it was not good way to do other activities for 10 minutes. However, after doing 10 minute vacation strategy, I did not feel headache and it helped me to concentrate on homework better.

The last thing I did was an organization. To organize my stresses and find out stress reducers, I used the chart at page 27l of CLS book. The below is picture of it.



Every day, I talked to my friends about my stresses. Then, they listened to me carefully and tried to give me the solutions. Even though those solutions were not perfect, my stresses were decreased while I was talking with my friends. For weekly, I wrote down all positive events on the diary that happened in the week, such as getting A grade on Japanese exam. Then, I felt happy and did not feel much stresses. For exam time, I made plug in note and tried to concentrate on exam. Making plug in note for Japanese exam was always very helpful that after making plug in note, I did not feel much stress of coming exam, because I knew that I could get good mark with good plug in note. If I had too much work, I used 10 minute vacation and took relax. For my major, I talked with my advisor and tried to choose what I really wanted to do. Having a conversation with my advisor was very helpful to me, because now, I'm 90 percent sure of my major, which is psychology.

Since this is almost the end of the term, to reduce stress is very important. I was not used to control my stresses. However, after doing stress management, I can decrease my stresses. Now, I can study hard for coming exams without much stresses.