BY RACHEL LUCE
Everyone has stress.
Stress can be good. People need stress to get motivated and do their best.
BUT. Stress, especially in high school, can be hard to overcome. However, with the right techniques, you CAN have success in your school career and not go TOO crazy. Many students don’t handle stress as well as they could, resulting in them not handling all the demands of being in high school. That just results in more stress, causing a vicious cycle and more stress.
A lot of high school students procrastinate, making them even more stressed out. The logic is they’re stressed out because they have so much homework and due dates that they don’t want to even think about doing all of the work.
Global news released an article on student stress (read more here), and pretty much blames parents for this problem, saying they need to create resilience in their children to help them in the future and not “bubble wrap” them.
The article also mentions how society is so stressful and that parents feel that they need to get their children ahead by putting them into sports and clubs and other activities. They are so busy taking their children to these activities they are not having any time to connect with their children.
This rubs off on students, teaching them that stress is always there, ironically stressing them out even more. Though stress in students is good for them (everyone knows some stress is a good thing to keep people from getting sluggish), too much stress can lead to mental problems and illnesses. Close to 20% of students have a mental health issue because of the stress they suffer from rising feelings of anxiety, depression. In extreme cases, this can lead to suicide.
Anna Serafini is a high achieving grade 11 student here at MD who knows about stress. Between doing her best at school playing basketball and her out of school activities, she needs to find creative ways to cope with stress. She claims that listening to music and playing sports works for her. Her best strategy? She says “I am a very open person and like to go to my friends about my stress and everything so I don’t bottle everything up.”
Here are a few tips for ANYONE on how to better deal with stress.
(read more here) :
- Make time for self-care. Everyone needs to sleep, eat healthy, have down time.
- Change your mindset. Always think positively.
- Approach all tasks step by step. Any big assignment is just a series of small step.
- Manage your goals; don’t take on more than you know you can handle.
- Take breaks from work, but schedule them and make sure you get back to your task after the break is over.
Sources:
Gregoire, Carolyn. “Academic Pressure: 5 Tips From An Expert On Coping With School Stress.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 27 Feb. 2013. Web. 8 Nov. 2014. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/27/academic-pressure-5-tips-_n_2774106.html>.
Personal Sources:
Anna Serafini
High School Student
Milton District High School.
THE MUSTANG MESSENGER 