Comprehensive Guide to Stress Management For Students
Updated: June 19, 2024
Published: March 25, 2019
Stress management for students is quite important. As a student, you go through a significant amount of pressure mainly due to the need to balance academics with your social life, extracurricular activities, and, in some cases, work. Some even face pressure from parents or the need to meet expectations set by themselves.
All these lead to some behavioral, physical, and psychological reactions that leave 30% of students sad and depressed. Specifically, changes in appetite or difficulty concentrating can manifest as sweating, increased heart rate, headaches, or a constant state of panic and fear that something bad will occur.
Having a stress management strategy incorporated into your daily routine is the best measure for battling the adverse effects caused by these in the long run. We intend to help you with developing this strategy, so read on to know just how to manage overwhelming situations as a student.
1. Prioritizing Sleep Helps with Productivity
The barrage of assignments or activities to complete as a student makes you feel like 24 hours are not enough. The overwhelming feeling that accompanies stressful schedules almost always leads to one thing; sleep becoming the sacrificial lamb.
What you may not know is that depriving yourself of sleep makes your situation even worse. Your productivity is greatly limited and you find it difficult to learn or even complete the activities that make you stay awake in the first place. This puts you at risk of academic failure or, maybe even worse, decreases your concentration and leaves you unaware of hazards around you.
Prioritizing sleep and getting at least 7 hours per day is one of the first steps in battling stress in college students. You increase your productivity as you think more clearly, improve your mood which makes your relationships easier to manage, and lower the risk of developing serious health issues like heart disease.
2. Routine Exercises Help in Stress Management For Students
We know your schedule is already tight enough, but taking some time out to exercise every day is one of the most effective student stress management measures. Don’t worry, by exercise, we don’t mean heading to the gym to lift heavy weights or going on jogs that stretch across kilometers.
Simply engaging in aerobic or light exercises suffices. If you can’t fit morning walks or jogs around the neighborhood into your schedule, then walking to school or getting yourself a bike to take you around are great options to opt for, given these are activities you can easily switch to.
You may even take elective classes or join clubs and societies that focus on leisure exercises or make some simple changes like opting for staircases instead of elevators and increasing your daily engagement in house chores that require some mobility.
When you put exercise into your stress management strategy, also remember to make activities part of a daily routine. Not only do they remain as effective as possible, but your body and mind easily adapt to accommodate these activities as necessities.
3. Engaging in Breath Control Sessions Helps
Acute stress accompanies the anxiety you get just before an examination or presentation and, with this, comes difficulty in breathing. Without managing your breath properly, you may end up with more severe responses like emotional imbalance and panic attacks, among others. Knowing how to control your breathing response then goes a long way.
A great place to start is having daily yoga sessions in the morning, as they help you maintain calmness and come with additional benefits like increasing your endorphin levels. If you find making time for yoga sessions impossible, then you may simply practice breathing exercises.
The best parts about breathing exercises are that they only take a few seconds or minutes, can be done anywhere and at any time (like in your examination hall before or during an exam, for instance), and are fast-acting activities against stress in college students.
4. Eating Healthy Foods Keep Students Mentally Healthy
Students face a common dilemma when it comes to eating. There is no time to prepare healthy food at home and you always have to resort to high-fat fast food options like burgers or even high-sugar alternatives like milkshakes and candies. Compiling on top of stress, these poor dietary habits then expose you to eating disorders, unhealthy weight gain, fatigue, and health risks like high blood pressure and diabetes.
Developing a great attitude toward the food you eat is one of the best stress management techniques for students. Some things you can do to this effect include opting for items like fruits, eggs, fish, and nuts when you can’t cook, always having water by your side or taking at least 3 liters per day, and avoiding drinks with caffeine and alcohol in them.
5. Maintaining A Social Network Works for Stress Management for Students
Isolation is the last thing you want to put yourself in when stressed out by schoolwork. It keeps you unhappy and prevents you from getting the support you need, especially in instances where advice on actions to take is very much needed. You build up an unhealthy amount of stress and don’t know what to do next.
Maintaining a functional social network has proven to be effective against both mental and physical stress in college students. You either have conversations with family and friends about the challenges you face in school or even go out to meet new people to strengthen your social support network.
While family and friends help with emotional support, new individuals, which include counselors, coursemates, or study groups, give you support to achieve academic success. The major factor that works with all these is finding out that you are not alone in facing your challenges.
Some additional measures you may take with stress management for students include engaging in mindfulness-based activities, practicing Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR), listening to your favorite music, and engaging in responsible time management.
Never Let the Stress Get to You
Without effective stress management for students, you always have to deal with unproductivity, anxiety, detrimental physical and mental health and damaged social relationships. Sleeping well takes the majority of stress off you, and you improve how well you cope or respond against it through exercises, eating healthy, and building a strong social network.
University of the People (UoPeople) is always dedicated to helping you achieve all your academic goals. Just like our tips on battling stress, you will find UoPeople’s American-accredited programs useful towards reaching any desired level of academic qualification and excellence.