Managing your stress level is critical to a healthy post-secondary lifestyle

Mike Treadgold

As you read this, you’re either just about to begin your first semester of university classes or you’ve already attended a few lectures and labs and you’re still trying to feel out this entire academic situation.

In all likelihood, you haven’t had to complete any assignments yet, aside from the possible icebreaker or general background knowledge quiz, both of which required relatively minimal thinking. With a minimal or even no current workload, you’re probably feeling pretty good about yourself right now and your ability to handle a multitude of assignments, while maintaining a low level of stress.

Well don’t get too far ahead of yourself there, tiger – it won’t always be this easy.

No, this isn’t meant to be a scare tactic but rather, words of advice that may help you with stress management as your first semester of classes progresses.

Deadlines all seem to fall right around the same time. After four or five weeks of relative ‘nothingness,’ you’ll suddenly find yourself overwhelmed with two midterms and three papers in one week, over five different classes. You’d almost think that the professors were trying to deliberately bait students into failing, but you’ll quickly realize that these types of ‘heavy’ weeks are just part of the experience.

“In Guelph’s 12-week semester, course content is compacted into a shorter time frame, so there’s less time to do the work you’re assigned, and procrastinating has a bigger impact,” said Maryann Kope, Manager of the Learning Services in the McLaughlin Library on campus. “Midterms can begin as early as week three, which can come as a bit of a shock if you’ve spent the first two weeks getting to know your floor mates and watching Glee.”

Stress management is a very real challenge for the average university student, and with that in mind, there are a number of (free) resources on campus made available to students that can help with your level of stress if it becomes unbearable. Probably the two most helpful resources for students dealing with both academic and personal stress are the Learning Commons on the first floor of the library and Student Life and Counselling Services on the third floor of the University Centre.

“We see a lot of first-year students come in to access our services, especially in the fall as they are dealing with adjustments,” said Rob Baldwin, a Clinical Social Worker at Student Life and Counselling Services. “If there is something that students want to talk about, they should come talk to us. We deal with personal and family issues, but we also work closely with academic program counsellors and the Learning Commons. We often find that when academic stress increases, other personal issues tend to come to the surface as well.”

Baldwin noted that there are a number of ‘triggers’ that can be attributed to heightening levels of stress that are common in many students that seek out counselling services.

“Issues like insomnia are very common in students,” he said. “I don’t tend to differentiate much between stress and anxiety. So often, students will come in having trouble with sleep – their thoughts are spinning. They have a lot of worry.”