Picture it, you are a first-year student in college, it is Sunday night, you are out with your friends relaxing after a stressful week of college, exams, homework, and new projects, etc. you look down at your phone and see that it is currently 11 pm. When suddenly you remember, you forgot that last test that you were supposed to take, it was worth 30% of your grade. Now the stress comes back, and you start to take deep and rapid breaths, next thing you know your friends are looking at you in concern as you look up at them from the ground, you passed out. You quickly get up and say you must go, you run outside into the street and look for your car, you cannot find it, but you hear a beep, it is getting louder, then BAM! You are hit by a car. Okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, but everyone in college has at one time or another been stressed out while attending college, and not always dealing with it in the right way, but hopefully after reading this you will find a few new ways to relax and help deal with your stress. 

 

Now one issue is that sometimes it can be hard to notice when your stressed out, so a few things to keep in mind is that some signs of stress include, but are not limited to “have sleep problems, find it hard to concentrate, bite your nails, pick your skin or grind your teeth, snap at people, or feel short of breath or breathe very fast” (https://www.nhs.uk.). Being able to know the signs of stress are important in being able to manage it, a current student at Akron University, Sophomore Noah Jones, we talked about his dealings with stress and how he managed it, but something he said really caught my attention,

What Noah said to me was crazy, and it really does put into perspective how stressful college can be when you first get there with lack of proper support. However that almost seems like a normal thing when talking to Joshua Robbins, a former Kent State student, who talked about his time as both an architecture major and as a visual communications design or VCD (Visual Communication Design) major, but he did mention that he felt more stress when he was in architecture as opposed to VCD, “In our first semester me and my friends would usually end up staying in the architecture building, studying in the library or in

our dorms till like 2 am, but we would all be so stressed and weird from the day and caffeine intake, that we would all still be up by 4 am.”. While Josh may have had a stressful time as an architecture major, he was not the only one, as reported by Own Your Own Future, the top three majors that require the most studying time, and in order from most to least is architecture with 18 to 22 hours a week, chemical engineering with 20 to 24 hours a week, and finally medicine & healthcare with 20 to 25 hours a week (www.ownyourownfuture).

Now with stress comes ways of trying to deal with stress, or most importantly, trying to find ways to stop it before it becomes an issue, and that important job is one that a lot of professors should be taking more seriously. A CAPS (Counseling and Psychological Services) spokesperson talked about how teachers can be there more for their students and help them out. One of the most important ways is seeing if the students had started to act differently, make sure they are okay, because just checking in can make all the difference,

“A lot of our therapists feel the same way, they feel a lot of the professors don’t care for the students, they are just there for a job, but if they were able to but if they were able to reach out to their students more, that could make a world of differences.”

CAPS representative

However a lot of the time these issues will fall onto the students themselves to deal with their issues in their own way, the CAPS spokesperson had recommended a few things for the students that they can do on their own, “Walks, walks are one of the best things to do, they can be so stress free and relaxing in the right weather, but sometimes if you need to have a used mind, to just stop thinking, we recommend working out, we find it helps students not only relieve stress, but it will help keep them healthy. Josh had mentioned that when he and his friends would get back from the Architecture building, they would play some Super Smash Bros to help relax them, “Super Smash was our go to, ya for some people it would be the opposite because it’s a fighting game where your pitted against your friends, but for us it was a fun way to bond, relieve pent up energy and just tire us out, it was always great fun.” Another student from Kent, Junior, Justin Rutherford talked about having this relaxation strategy in the warmer months,

As you can see, there are many ways people can express stress, but having someone in your corner can make all the difference. Or being able to have a healthy way to let that stress out. It is one of the ways that were talked about before, or your own distinct way, just be sure to let it out and not let it build up.