As a full-time college student many of us experience stress in waves. The tsunami of all tsunamis typically rears it's ugly head as we're sitting in the last class of the week, going over our syllabus, reading the course calendar and realizing we have a test scheduled in every class, on the same day all semester long. At this point we begin to convince ourselves that all of our professors got together, decided they hated every single one of their students, plotted against us, thus planning our d-day and probably laughing about it. Narcissists. Then of course, it returns at the end of the semester in the form of final exams, just to remind us that we really don't have lives and that tiny intermission was just a test. To add to that death sentence there are also papers, homework assignments, quizzes, if you're a psych major like myself there is TONS and I mean TONS of research on topics you probably don't care too much about, grad school preparation (GRE, GMAT) labs, internships, externships, reading, and the list goes on. Oh, but life doesn't end there. Our slavery duties then spill over to the workplace. If you're anything like me it takes everything you have NOT to think about everything else you could possibly be doing with your time while instead, you're pretending to like the annoying people walking into your place of business (annoying because they have a day off and you don't), faking smiles, and doing everything you can to make their day better when really, all you want to do is go home, and go to sleep (which you can't do because when you go home you have 45 assignments and 3 quizzes to submit before midnight). Trying to have a social life is almost impossible, you find yourself fitting people in at odd hours of the night, googling late night salons, dentist offices, doctor's offices and who knows what else in hopes of not looking like a wreck all semester, working out at 2 am and scheduling sleep. If you couldn't already tell, The Stressful Life of a College Senior would take up about 500 pages in my biography and then the book would end. Recently, I found myself stressing out about the amount of stress I've (unfortunately) put on myself this semester and came across an article on ways to manage stress. Here's what I thought important:
Effects of Stress (not in any particular order)
1. Insomnia (Check)
2. Obesity
3. Heart disease
4. Skin conditons
5.Autoimmune disease
6. Memory loss (Check)
7. Moodiness (Check)
8. Agitation (Check)
9. Short-temper (Check)
10. Feeling overwhelmed (double-check)
Stress-Relievers (not in any particular order)
1.Listen to music
2. Have sex
3. Balance your diet
4. Journal
5. Exercise
6. Meditation
7. Do something you love
8. Set aside personal time (mental health days!)
9. Say 'no' more often
10. Hang out with a kid
I for one will be practicing some of these stress relieving activities in high hopes of salvaging my sanity. I highly suggest you all do the same!
"Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency."
-Natalie Goldberg
"Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering."
- Pooh's Little Instruction Book
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