4 Positive Ways to Deal with Stress at College
Coping with stress at college is just part and parcel of earning your college degree. Trying to juggle a full course load, bustling social life and in some instances work can give college students their first real taste of the stress that comes in later life. Even though stress is an inescapable part of college, it doesn’t necessarily have to become part of your everyday life. Stress that builds up can be detrimental to all aspects of student life, so we have put together some great positive ways to deal with stress when at college.
- Go out of the campus and have a walk or jog around the city or countryside. Just getting up and walking away from the situation is an amazing way to watch your stress levels drop. Being outdoors will help you deal with the stress that has built up from hunching over study books and computers.
2. Have a massage. While trying to fit in a luxurious massage at a local spa may be too much of a time or money expenditure for yourself, getting a quick chair massage that you can comfortably fit into a break or lunch is an excellent opportunity to relax your mind and body and beat stress before it builds up.
3. Instead of allowing the workflow to continually get on top of you, try spending some time to create a plan of action and stick to it. This often helps to reduce stress as you will have a plan of what to do when and also be able to schedule some down time during the day as well.
4. Have a chat with a friend or for that matter anybody who will listen. That social interaction will help immensely. As humans we are very social creatures, and being stuck in a dim room studying all day causes a fair amount of stress. Communicating or spending time with someone else can be all you need to alleviate the stress.
Ultimately these are just positive ways in which to deal with stress, but they are very general. You may find you have a specific task, chore or hobby that you enjoy which will work better than any of the suggestions above. It’s all a case of finding the right things for you. The main thing is that you find a way to deal with stress in a positive way. Too often, students find that they are in over their head, or can’t handle the stress at a particular time, and as such engage in destructive behavior, from binge drinking to blowing off classes or dropping out. With time and stress management, this destructive behavior can be avoided.