Counselling and Personal Development
Student Life
Stress is a normal part of studying for a university degree, but if you don’t manage your study load and your other commitments well, the stress can become overwhelming. Learn about stress, how to prevent it, and how to deal with it when you have it.
What
is stress?
Stress is experienced when you perceive there are high demands made on your time, ability, or personal resources, and you also perceive that you have little control over these demands. Because your perception plays an important part in experiencing stress, it is a very individual thing and varies enormously between students.
When you experience stress you have three choices of reaction available to you, Fight, Flight, or Flow. You can Fight your way through the demand by confronting it and giving it your best shot. You can take Flight from it and avoid the stress. Or you can Flow with the situation and see where it takes you. Making the right decision about how to react will reduce your stress, making the wrong one can increase the stress.
Stress
and your study
You can keep your study related stress down by staying on top of your study load. You can do this by using your time well each day, during the week, and across the semester. You are expected to commit about 40 hours study a week for a full time study load. What you don’t do it today, will need to be done tomorrow. Don’t wait until the assignment is due tomorrow!
High demand for assignments + Low Control of time left = Stress City! Use a daily diary, have a wall chart for the semester, and you can get a weekly timetable (47kb .doc) here.
Quick
tips to prevent and deal with stress
Taking
it further
