Stress.
We all know what it is and with one year of college under my belt I have a decent grasp on the concept of stress. I experienced both positive and negative stress in my first year at Penn State. The negative stress normally rearing its ugly head the few weeks leading up to finals week. You want to do your best to avoid negative stress because of what it can do to your body and mind. Now, positive stress is another story; some amount stress can do great things for you. I’ve seen family members land themselves a hospital stay due to stress and I want to take this opportunity to explore what exactly stress is and how it affects us all.
Merriam-Webster defines stress as “a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation.” So, if next week you have a cold, it could be because you waited until this Thursday night to do all your blog posts! The American Institute of Stress has some interesting information on stress. Originally the term “stress” was used in physics to describe elasticity. “Stress” was coined by Hans Selye in 1936 as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change.” His definition attempts to identify and explain a human phenomenon we all experience. Stress is very hard to explain because it affects everyone in a unique way. To a certain extent, it can actually make you more productive (positive stress), but after a point you start to experience the affects of negative stress that we all aim to avoid. And that point of “too much stress” is different for everyone. The key is to operate in the “good stress” section of this graph found on The American Institute of Stress’s website.
As you can see, once you reach the “hump” things start to go rapidly downhill. If you reach the exhaustion and ill health levels of stress you can quickly find yourself in the emergency room. Chronic Stress, in particular, can take you to these points fairly easily. According to the Mayo Clinic, chronic stress can lead to anxiety, depression, sleep problems, weight gain and even heart issues.
However, finding that happy medium of stress that leads to higher performance is what we want to accomplish as college students. In college, stress will come naturally due to the amount of assignments and information we are responsible for. The key to finding this “happy place” is managing our stress and responsibilities and in turn maximizing our performance. The American Psychology Association suggests that identifying the causes of stress (stressors) and developing a plan to combat them can greatly reduce stress. For example, with SC 200, a plan for dealing with stress could be to set aside time each week to do your blog posts.
Stress can be caused by many different things and manifest itself in a myriad of ways. Positive stress could result in you studying a little more for you next exam or, if improperly managed, negative stress could be your ticket to the ER. Stress is a part of every day life but with a little time management you can keep it in check.
This blog was really insightful and opened my eyes to see how you can take something negative and turn it into something positive. I tend to stress myself out a lot, especially when it comes to schoolwork. But now looking back on it, I realize that the extra bit of stress and anxiety I had while studying gave me more of an incentive to study more! I will agree though that stress is tricky because too much of it can be dangerous and disrupt you from completing what you are actually getting stressed about.
Stress is a really difficult thing to manage, especially in college. There are too many students all over the nation that suffer from stress due to poor study habits and time management. Stress can also lead people to do many unhealthy things, such as smoking or drinking or using recreational drugs. Students believe that these substances will help to relieve their stress, when in reality it just makes them forget them for a short amount of time, but then they reappear. Great ways to handle stress include meditating, yoga, exercising, and even talking to people about it. I often find that when i talk to people who are feeling the same anxious feelings about a certain issue, I feel calmer knowing that I am not the only one going through that struggle.
I agree with your explanation of the concept of positive stress because personally I am able to be the most productive when I am stressed. I think it is because I know that I need to work hard and focus or else I will not be able to complete everything on my to-do list. A little bit of stress acts as an incentive for me to work hard. Jennifer Parmelee, a yoga instructor, explained that the best way to avoid positive stress from turning into negative stress is to “try not to let it take control of you.”
I think stress can definitely be a positive influencer. Personally, I almost never get any work done when I have a ton of time to do a small amount of work. I am held back by the fact that I have too much time to do the work that is put ahead of me, and almost never get it out of the way as I should. I instead procrastinate until I have very little time left, at which point I am able to bang out all of my work. When I have an overwhelming amount of work, though, I force myself to sit down and do it, removing any possibility of procrastination. This also applies at work. When I am facing a rush, I zone in, and rarely ever make a mistake, but when I have lots of time to play orders, I often write down the wrong information, or deliver to the wrong table. While not everyone may be able to harness stress as a positive influence, I definitely am.