Isabelle Miller discusses how to cope with stress and the importance of taking the time to relax.
Stress is universal
My friends talk a lot about how their workload becomes very stressful, especially entering exam season. Although that is some time away, students feel stressed all throughout the year. Mostly because everyone has different deadlines and life in generally can be stressful. If your friend says they are doing fine with work they are probably just able to handle it better or they just do not want to talk about it.
However, for a fair amount of people stress overload happens. People need to be aware of stress, not only for students, but for everyone. It is sneaky the way it changes someone’s mood and then bad things follow.
How do you resolve stress?
It is different for each individual, but suggestions will not hurt. Find time to do something for yourself even if it is a nap or a coffee break, away from working. If you get to the point where you want to throw something at a wall just take a moment to think about yourself and talk to someone. It happens to everyone. My personal reaction is to find a pillow and hug it, so take from that what you will!
“What works for you?”
I asked my sister on the topic. She has finished university and currently works in a busy secondary school.
She says “I tend to worry about everything, it starts something fairly big and then I start worrying about the smaller things too. For example, I had to produce last minute cover work for a young girl who needs one to one guidance, it got very complicated. This then triggered me worrying about not having enough pictures for a quiz for rangers or seeing that one bag of clothes in the corner of my room just does not seem to go away”.
She then goes on to say “stress is not so much a resolve, more of a realisation that it is like a flicker, and it will feel like an endless flicker but even reading a book or listening to that one song helps me, it is about finding that one thing that takes you out of the stress” – Carre Miller
Overall, what I have found out from my sister and general attitudes from my friends, is that you MUST take a break eventually. Take a moment to smile and think about something that is not stressful.
Brightening your day
This link from YouTube cheers me up and hopefully it will for you too.
