Friday, March 13, 2020

Alanna 11; Stress Class 101

The time of year when the stress piles up is coming upon us. Between getting your grades up for finals, AP tests, SATs (for some), prom, and our extracurriculars, it is the recipe for stress. I have the SATs Saturday, ACT in April, 3 AP tests in May along with prom, and any finals I have to take after that. It seems as though from now until the end of school, I don’t get a break. Personally, I think they pile way too much onto students at the end of the school year, but I understand it is inevitable. Although we cannot avoid it, it still sucks a whole bunch and I am here to help you.

Lately, I have been trying this new tip, that most likely should have been common sense, yet I still was amazed by it, to help with my stress. In psychology, we talked about anxious and healthy achievers and checked off some characteristics of each that fit us. Unsurprisingly, I got 1 of a healthy achiever and 4 of an anxious one. A girl in my class raised her hand and said, “ I talked to my psychologist about my stress over school and finished work, and she suggested that instead of working right when I get home from school, take 2 hours to relax”. TWO HOURS!? Yes, my thoughts exactly. My day is as follows: get home, do homework, do extracurriculars, go home, do homework, eat, sleep. Given the circumstances, I thought this was crazy to waste 2 hours of precious time. However, I put away my ignorance and tried it. The results were insane. Instead of studying for the 4 hours after school, I cut that in half, and I did better on my test! I found that I was less overwhelmed and mentally exhausted, so, therefore, I did better. Although to start I was more stressed over the fact I wasn't studying enough, that feeling faded after I started getting results I wanted. I also began to find it easier to finish things efficiently and in a timely manner because I was more focused on the task instead of dozing off.

 I highly recommend you try this if you, too, are one to overly stress over your amount of schoolwork along with other responsibilities.

Are you one to stress too much and overcompensate your ability to work?
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2 comments:

  1. I usually do feel stressed most of the time, and I always try to alleviate it by taking short breaks. Taking two hours to relax does seem crazy to me though; I can't imagine wasting that much time to relax when I could be using that time to get some work done. I'll probably try it out though since it seems to me that it works.

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  2. Yes unfortunately. I stress myself out so much and it’s led to so many mental breakdowns and uncontrollable sobbing, I can’t even begin to count the amount of times it’s happened. The worst part about it is that most of these breakdowns happen here in school and often have me going to either Mr. Angstadt or Mrs. Hayward so I can talk about what’s going on in my head. I think the root cause of my stress is how scared I am for my future. I’m constantly worried that my future won’t be as great as I hope for it to be and that it won’t reach my expectations. A lot of people tell me I worry too much about the future rather than living in the now, and sadly, I agree. I also think a huge part of it is just comparing myself to everyone around me. All of my friends are either in top 10%, National Honor Society, or both… and I’m in neither. It’s definitely difficult at times knowing that I’m not at the same academic level of competence as everyone that I associate myself with. I’m always comparing myself to them, but currently I’ve really been trying to work on NOT doing that haha. I think I just need to realize more often that I am competitive and successful in certain aspects of life, even if it’s not exactly academic oriented.

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