Stress Management

Stress…everyone has it especially in college. Sometime I feel trapped or even suffocated from it and think there is no way out. Every day there is a constant struggle to keep up with both your school and personal life and you are bound to forget some of the things you have to do. When I first came into college stress was a very common theme among my every day life. I liked to leave all my assignments to the last minute as I have mentioned many times before. I had never been on my own before and let things that my mom or dad would usually take care of pile up. I didn’t truly know the meaning of living on your own. I quickly became aware of the things I would need to do in order to be a successful college student but that didn’t mean I would be able to deal with them in a stress free environment. Cue the stress. I was constantly overwhelmed with work, which ultimately made me freak out and get run down and sick.

However, after taking CLS and starting to implement certain strategies that helped me with problems such as procrastination and study habits I was starting to reduce the amount of stress in my life and now with these stress management strategies I am confident I will be able to tackle stress for now on.

The first thing the textbook had you do was list your sources of stress and rate them from high stress (H), low stress (L), or (N) for not an issue. I was able to conclude that my highest sources of stress were grades, summer internship, money, friends, relationships, and my sorority. This was a helpful task because I never before pin pointed my stress areas. In the back of my mind I knew where they rooted from but I never physically wrote them down and was able to see them.

The next thing I did was a stress diagram. This helped me take the high stress sources I identified above and break them down into which causes the most amount of stress. I based this upon how much time I spend thinking about these things a day and which I constantly find myself worrying the most about. I concluded that my grades and money are the two things that I think about the most throughout a day in college. I would say this strictly pertains to college because when I am home for example for the summer I don’t have to think about work and in addition I don’t have to be as aware of all the money I spend because I will be living back with my parents.

            Lastly, I have been more aware of integrating activities into a stress reduction plan. Before reading the chapter I always thought of all the things listed as ways of procrastinating but through this course I have realized its all about a little bit of giving and taking. If you work for a significant amount of time your allowed to reward yourself with a movie or a TV show. I think the next time I am feeling stressed out I am going to try either taking a walk or run.

            I am excited to use these strategies in the future and ultimately reduce the amount of stress in my everyday life.