“Stress” is a term that has come to be commonplace in the world of education. From early morning classes; to afternoons filled with extracurricular activities; to endless nights crammed with projects, assignments and studying, stress in students, even at high levels, seems inevitable. However, students who cannot combat this inevitability and treat it properly are very likely to crumble under the pressure. In fact, the “educational burnout” boom indicates that college dropout rates are now at a staggering 50%, with 33% of students withdrawing after their first year. A 2009 poll revealed that more than 85% of current college students feel some sort of stress on a daily basis, stress was a factor in about three quarters of college dropouts’ decisions to leave school. Unfortunately for them, six out of every ten dropouts admitted that they never considered talking to a counselor to help them deal with stress and other emotional issues. There are healthy ways for college students to deal with their stress, if they are willing to explore some options and take some simple advice.
First of all, it is important to acknowledge that there is such a thing as healthy stress, also known as creative tension. Anyone who can say that they “work better under pressure” or “come through in the clutch” has experienced this healthy level of pressure. For many students, it provides the perfect amount of motivation necessary to accomplish a task. Creative tension gives students the ability to stretch beyond their normal levels of thought processing and garner the ideas and knowledge required for certain tasks that they may otherwise be too lazy or disinterested to pursue fully. However, without the proper authority over stress, what seemed like a manageable level could aggrandize into a degree far more severe.
Unhealthy stress is what many of the students in the college dropout boom are experiencing. It comes as no surprise that expectations on today’s students to succeed are remarkably high. When students let their stress get the better of them, it often turns into a downward spiral that is next to impossible to conquer. Unhealthy levels of stress typically leads to negative self-talk, during which the student tells him or herself that he or she is simply not good enough, and there is no possible way to accomplish the task at hand. When students feel trapped under this immense pressure, it becomes more likely for them to turn to unsafe, debilitating, and sometimes illegal alternatives to escaping their stress. Cheating is an epidemic among college students desperate for success, as campuscalm.com tells us that about half of today’s college students have admitted to cheating or plagiarizing at least once. Many students turn to drugs or alcohol as a temporary departure from reality, and a release from stress. These irrational and dangerous measures taken by students are simply the result of their desperation for relief. These students need to realize that there are healthy alternatives even when dealing with unhealthy levels of stress.
Fortunately, the pressures that college students face on a daily basis, as well as tendencies for students to resort to negative stress management habits, have not gone unnoticed by the general public. Students who feel bogged down and are seeking refuge from their mounds of schoolwork or demanding schedule have several options. A great place to start exploring these options is the Internet. eCampusTours.com is one site that gives particularly good tips and advice on how to stay on top of a packed schedule and still have a great time in college, worry-free. These tips include organizing, making to-do lists, prioritizing, exercising, maintaining a healthy diet and even saving a block of time everyday for relaxing—because in college, you never can get enough rest.
Perhaps the best way to relieve stress and anxiety is through speech. Sometimes, all it takes to rationally think through and solve a problem is to simply talk about it and manually work it out. Colleges and universities across the country, including the University of Miami, have become wise to this strategy, and have developed counseling centers on campus where students can come at any time to simply have a discussion about the issues that are giving them grief. Counseling centers at schools like the University of Miami has a full staff of trained psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors and social workers. They share a mission to help students succeed both academically and socially in college. In addition, these counselors field questions about further educational and career decisions.
I’m sure that any student who reads this can relate to the feeling of being extremely stressed out or filled with anxiety as a result of being under too much pressure. It is very common and has actually become a feeling we expect to happen several times throughout a semester of college. But this should not be the case necessarily and just like the article reports, it is having very negative results including developing health problems or dropping out of school altogether!
ReplyDeleteI agree with all of the reasons given about stress and dropping out of school but I want to point out another reason I see that is pushing this trend. Students feel the pressure from a very early age of having to go to college and succeed in order to have a great career with top salary. They get this idea in their heads that it is the best and only way to be successful and therefore go to great measure to first get into college and second to do well while there. A student straight out of high school may not be ready to take 5 intense college courses, get a part-time job, and still enjoy the social excitement of living on their own for the first time ever but they are shown that that is what the other students are doing so they should be able to also.
If you take a step back and look at what many kids have piled onto their plates, it would be impossible for anyone to not get stressed out! But because they have an advisor telling them they must take 5 classes each semester to graduate in 4 years, a parent telling them they must work to pay for any fun things they want to do, and a new group of friends telling them they have to go to the party tonight, it is hard for a student to do any less than that! And here is where the stress begins and either takes a toll on the student’s health or takes a toll on their studies and causes them to drop out.
It is so important for young adults to realize that there is a healthy amount of stress to have and beyond that it is not okay. It will only have a negative outcome in the end so might as well take control of it now. Students must take a step back when scheduling their next semester and make sure that they will be able to handle it. And if they feel that they cannot handle it, maybe college isn’t the best thing for them and they should look in to other options that may work out better for them. But just as Andrew mentions, there is lots of help available to relieve stress and it is not worth it to let it take over to the point of dropping out of school or taking on unhealthy habits to decrease stress. Know your healthy limits and stick to them, then you will be more successful than you can imagine.
The College Dropout Boom: Students Under Too Much Pressure? Response.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Andrew’s opinion piece, I was not surprised about the reported increase in the college drop out rate as a result of stress. I feel there are days during everyone’s semester where they feel a nice extended break would be necessary. Students not only have to go to class, but they must write countless papers, study for midterms and finals, have a part time job, and try to balance a social life. A social life could include not only partying, but also participating in a school’s sport team to planning a big event for the university. All of these activities are extremely time consuming. Thus, the biggest problem for college students would be to find a minute in the day to finish all of these tasks.
Andrew touched on the idea of planning. I agree that organizing and planning are the number one ways of avoiding stress. For example, I sometimes make a schedule for the overall week or I will make a schedule where every hour of my day is planned. Although this might sound a bit crazy, these schedules help me finish all of my necessary tasks versus spending too much time on the Internet or watching television.
Another key word to remember when trying to avoid stress is prioritizing. I often find myself struggling over which task is more important. Should I study for a test that is 25% of my overall grade, or should I do my reading for the next day? Usually, I will study for my test and then read the following day, after my test is over. Prioritizing is crucial to figuring out which tasks are necessary. If these college dropouts could have found a way to balance all of their necessary tasks in their days, they would have probably still been in school and possibly would have graduated.
Many universities try to lighten students’ loads by implementing that students should only take four college courses per semester. For example, when I was a freshman at Boston University, freshmen were only allowed to take 16 credit hours or four courses. The university believed this gave students the time to assimilate to their new surroundings, while receiving a taste of the college workload. If students only have to manage four midterms and finals versus five, their stress would definitely decrease. If every college would try to implement this standard course load, then many more students would not feel the need to drop out of college, thus significantly lessening their overall stress level.