Stress at university | Law Careers

Symptoms

Some of the symptoms of stress include feeling anxious, restless and irritable and these can often lead to sufferers losing their appetite, being depressed, or experiencing distorted sleep patterns.  Stress may even manifest in skin problems.

This article will explore the various ways of overcoming and dealing with stress. Some of the key reasons that students feel stressed is because of coursework deadlines or exam pressure.

Avoiding Stress

It may sound cliché, but the best way to avoid stress is planning out your work before deadlines and exams. In most cases, students underestimate the amount of work they would need to complete and take it easy until a couple of days before the exam or coursework deadline. 

On the other hand, some students believe that they work better under stress; it may be that their mind responds to challenges better when they are under pressure. However, sometimes that can be a misconceived excuse to leave your work until the last moment.

By avoiding putting yourself in such a situation, you will immensely decrease the amount of stress and pressure you face, which can prevent it negatively impacting your health. When placed in a stressful situation many students panic, cry or give up. A tense state of mind will adversely affect the quality of work you produce, ultimately reflecting in your grades. 

Overcoming Stress

When you feel stressed it is a good idea to do activities through which your physical energy can be released. Good examples of this are sports such as football, tennis and swimming.

Many people also find that a short session in the gym helps, and going for a walk or listening to music definitely has therapeutic affects too. Yoga, aerobics and dance are also good ways of releasing stress as you are letting your mind relax and using your energy elsewhere. 

Try not to be alone in a stressed situation as it is good to talk to someone, like your friends, and to share your feelings with them. Watching a light-hearted comedy can also help to relax and ease your mind, and for those with less time on their hands just watching a comedy sitcom can have a similar effect. 

One thing that a lot of us forget is that our mood is often related to what we eat, so a healthy balanced diet is crucial in keeping both our body and our minds healthy.

As well as reducing the likelihood of illness and weakness, eating well has the double benefit of reducing your levels of stress-inducing chemicals and improving the way you look, which will certainly lift your mood.

What to avoid

Research suggests that foods intended to give you a short boost such as the sugars in chocolate and the caffeine in coffee, actually cause a long-term “low” and so should be avoided, whilst salty foods such as crisps dehydrate the body and the brain, causing fatigue.

Meals high in fat raise stress hormone levels and keep them high. In stressed situations you may want to smoke or drink alcohol to relax yourself or take tablets such as Pro Plus in order to stay awake; excessive amounts of any of these will not help you to cope with your stress and could make you ill.

Support

If you have a coursework deadline to meet and there is a lot of work to be done it may help working in a group and dividing research tasks amongst yourselves. Similarly with exam revision, if you work in a group you don’t feel as though you’re alone. 

Believe it or not, others are in the same position as you. Also, don’t expect yourself to complete impossible amounts in one day. To circumvent this, set yourself a realistic target which you know you can achieve and that way you will feel less stressed, get more work done and have time to relax and unwind after.

If you need help, ask your friends to go through topics with you or parts which you do not understand. 

Although it may be very difficult to do, always try to stay calm and composed. It goes without saying that it is much easier to prevent the occurrence of such a situation by being organised than to deal with it once you have already gotten yourself into it.

Planning out tasks and setting deadlines for yourself in which to complete them is always useful.  Don’t forget that, once the exams are over and the coursework is handed in, you can forget all about it... but the time beforehand should be used wisely!

By Nuha Nagory 
Undergraduate at Brunel University

22-09-2009