Open Your Eyes: Student Stress

Open Your Eyes: Student Stress

By Taylor LaTray Posted December 14, 2011

High school is supposed to be one of the best times of your life, but many demands, rapid changes, and pressure cause it to be one of the most stressful experiences. Students these days have become overwhelmed with so many activities that create an overload of stress.

‘Stress’ is defined as the way our bodies and mind react to life and changes. It is incredibly important to learn to tolerate and handle stress so it does not lead to further intense problems. Our generation, often referred to as the ‘Facebook generation’ is being accused of being the laziest generation ever. A survey in 2009 by the Pew Research Centre found three in four people believe our generation is less virtuous and less industrious than our previous generations. This could possibly be because we know facts are accessible online when needed so we slack and do not retain our learning.

The amount of time we spend actually using our brain has also declined. An academic research paper produced by Philip S. Babcock charts that between 1961 and 2005 the number of hours per week students spent studying has dramatically decreased. We have spent 13 hours less a week studying, than that of the classes who graduated before us making it harder for us to accomplish tasks and increasing stress.

“I see a lot of stress surrounding me having to do with school work, sports, and dating is also a major thing. I do not believe that stress can be cured, my recommendation to avoid stress is not to have a girlfriend, don’t do it,” said Joey Flanders
The major stressors of many students come down to, their academics, dating, environment, peers, extracurricular, workload, time management, and parental pressure. All these stressors link together to create an overkill pushing students to the edge. Anxiety can lead to conflicts in school and at home that devastates the lives of many teens and can be permanent. Stress isn’t all bad, there is positive motivating stress that can help students to excel in school, sports, and other activities.

Tension can affect you in many awful ways such as depression, the urge to fight, and slacking. It’s also physically harmful leading to the narrowing of the arteries, elevation of cholesterol, weight gain, headaches, back pain, etc. Stress on students and teens can become extremely serious ruining the rest of their lives if left unmanaged. When students participate in positive, goal-directed activities they get the chance to develop skills, build character and sample different fields of human venture. When doing this lessens their chances of engaging in risky and wrong behavior. They strive to do great and compete rather than waste their time on the couch or out participating in illegal doings creating an overload of constant worry.

If you need to cope with your stress, there are ways to do so. Boys are known to more often avoid their stress, while girls actively look for support and try to reduce it. You can study regularly and actively, be active in class, get help, rid yourself of problem people, lighten up and laugh a little, be positive, have a healthy escape with physical activity.

Stress is not a condition that can’t be fixed, but with the help of others and wise choices, and time management, you can be back to your old self in no time. You can overcome all obstacles that come your way with simple determination.

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