If you ask any college student, whether freshman or grad student, what their top three problems in college are, stress will inevitably top that list. I’ve been at Louisiana Tech for less than three months, and I have had countless mental breakdowns. Students’ issues range from financial instability, to scholastic problems, to emotional anxiety, back to financial instability, and right over to being ill prepared. When most students think about the overwhelming amount of stress they’re facing, they link it back to the University. The stress became too much as soon as we started college, but do not solely blame the University. Trace the problem back to its root, High School. There is stress to be found in every situation, by no means is it unavoidable. However, being better equipped to handle the stress of college removes a large sum of the problem. This brings me to what I learned from High School. The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Your grade point average is unimportant. “Me llama es Abigail.” While I am very proud of the fact that I can introduce myself while in Mexico, that information has yet to apply to me in the outside world. Problems I have encountered include paying bills, managing money, balancing work and school, and acclimating to being alone. How do we equip students to better handle these pressing issues? There is only one obvious solution, throw them out into the real world. If students are prepared with the textbook knowledge needed to pass
After graduating high school, no one prepares you for college. Most kids when they are finished with high school don’t even fantasize about going back to school. I have always wanted to go to college ever since I was a young kid. I also had dreams of myself going to college, but in my dreams, everything was picture perfect. In reality, college has been very challenging for me. No one tells you about the adjustments and complications that you would have to face to become a successful college student.
In “High School Students are Stressed Out About College Admissions; The Reality of Burning Out Before College,” Olsen (2015) discusses about how on-coming college students experience stress prior to college, and the means to be the best at everything so that colleges accept
Socially, religiously, and scholastically, a person’s values are severely challenged as he enters college. A major university has many evil faces that can alter a person’s values if he or she is not careful. Fraternities and their counterpart, sororities, target freshmen mainly because they’re young, easily influenced, and lonesome. Religious organizations try their best to counter the fraternities by gathering these young scholars to spread their word. The University of Georgia itself causes turmoil in these students' beliefs by requiring classes that promote a change in merit. These are the main things that I have encountered as a student through the University, and all three intrude on my
The majority of students that attend colleges and universities feel it’s unfair to be restricted from taking courses outside their major field of study. We want to maintain our right of freedom of choice; however, last time I checked we worked so hard to get the opportunity to learn on a higher level and be challenged on our knowledge. Additionally, we took out loans to pay for our college, which means we should take any courses we desire that will expand our knowledge on subjects we crave to learn about; also, the requirement amount of credits to graduate. Finally, college is all about finding yourself, you really cannot find yourself with restrictions in life.
“Although, some students can take on increased pressure; other students will develop anxiety or depression” (Damer & Melendres. 2011). According to a study provided by 67 counselors from 54 different colleges from all over the United States, the most common mental health problems in community college students were general anxiety disorders at 84.8%, depression at 89.4% and stress at 89.4% (Katz & Davison. 2014). In another study 25% of students reported having mental health problems which included anxiety, and only 8% of students had been diagnosed with depression (Hussain et al. 2013).
In a study at a Midwestern university whose participants varied in age, sex, their year in school, major etc., it was reported that the top four sources that cause stress in college students are from a change in sleeping habits, change in eating habits, the academic challenge of school work, and new responsibilities. Freshman specifically is more prone to this stress because of the new transition into the college lifestyle. Starting out as a freshman and already having a mindset of having too many responsibilities can set up a student to be unsuccessful right off the bat. They are not used to being away from home and being independent. They have never been held to the high
Stress is unavoidable, no matter the situation, location, or time; stress is always present. Stress is found in higher levels during the duration in which students attend college. It is predictably higher among college students, freshmans in particular, because of the extreme expectations set upon them by their parents and, of course, society. The need to please their parents, longing for success in life, and being able to sustain a reasonable income in the future, all of which falls into the hands of college students who are making critical decisions which may decide the outcome for a large portion of their lives. If these students end up hating their future jobs, the stress of having to go back into college to study for a new career
College represents a form of higher learning. For many, it is also a time for personal growth as we transition into adulthood. This in itself is a stressful situation as one must make drastic adjustments to a new role, environment, and demands. Stress is a major contributor to the development of mental and emotional issues (Rodgers, L., Tennison, L. 2009). Research has been done to determine the impact of depression and anxiety on university students. It has been
Stress. It is an emotion anyone and everyone has experienced at one point or another. Some deal better with it than others. There are countless things that can cause it. A common reason for stress is the transition from the innocence and simplicity of childhood to the harsh reality known as adulthood. Graduating high school and embarking on the journey of college deals largely with this transition. Times used to be far simpler when we didn’t have a care in the world but now finances and jobs are all that matters. Transitioning into new things can be scary and also very stressful. Entering adulthood comes with big responsibilities. College is scary as hell and piles on loads of stress, especially in the first year. Tyler Perry from the band Twenty One Pilots, sings about the effects of stress in his song “Stressed Out”. His song should be the anthem of my college experience so far. I’m stressed the F out!
First off, adjusting to academic factors in the freshmen year can create stress for students in a variety of ways. First of all, first-year students experience stress while trying to keep up with the new academic workloads in college, which are completely different and more challenging than the workloads in high school. To illustrate this, in Alan Schwartz’s article in the
That feeling of walking back from an exam or staying up all night cramming information is well known to any student who has been through college. It leaves one feeling overwhelmed like the week will never end. The feelings are held inside while friends and roommates accuse moodiness which leads to the meltdown that is inevitable. These times are a result of a common state known as stress. Stress is a condition in which the body responds to any kind of demand or threat caused by life factors which include pressure, work, school, major changes, and lack of sleep. This factor is very common in colleges, especially freshmen and can also be seen here at Trine University. Stress can affect both physical and mental conditions in the body, such as sleep patterns, eating habits, anxiety,
There are so many students who say they are hardworking and can handle the pressure from a solid college workload. However too many times these students fall behind in their studies and though they probably don’t mean to end up just trying to “survive” their classes. This is exactly what professors fear though they have no reason to with me. I always put my best foot forward and have had more than enough experience winning the fight against stress.
Stress is no new phenomenon. It’s been around as long as man and has captivated scholars and physicians alike. With the growing demand for degrees in the professional world comes the growth of the number of college students. The relationship between stress and college students has become the subject of on-going research. Several studies show that stress in college students is increasing with time and the authors of those studies are attributing this to an increased number of students. Other research seems to indicate that it isn’t necessarily the stress that is increasing but the awareness of it. Increased awareness of stress, and its unique toll on individuals, allows colleges and students to recognize
"The more we know the world around us, the more successful we will be." This quote, from the introduction of my high school chemistry book, was my driving force as a teenager to attend college. My expectations of college were to gain insight into a world that I had not yet discovered. I had high aspirations of receiving a good education and obtaining a good job when I graduated. But four years later when graduation day arrived, I felt unfulfilled. In evaluating my education, I realized that I learned how to get good, but not great grades. I learned how to study to make the most of my time. The focus I shared with many of my peers was not always to appreciate the information received, but rather,
A total of 460 tertiary students took part in the vigilance experiment, of which 312 participants were female, 147 identified as male and one student was unspecified. The youngest age was 16 with the oldest reported at 56, averaging an age of 19.67 years among the subjects overall.